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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
(P ^ 308? — 

Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf.L22^^^ 
/^(^ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



By Mary Ashley Townsend. 

XARIFFA'S POEMS. 
i2mo. Cloth, gi. 50. 

DISTAFF AND SPINDLE. 

Quarto. Cloth extra, $1.50. 




/VZOJiyO ULj 



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"^a^ 



DOWN THE BAYOU, THE CAP- 
TAIN'S STORY, AND OTHER 
^OEMS. BY MARY ASHLEY 
TOWNSEND 




PHILADELPHIA 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

MDCCCXCVI 







?^^ 



Copyright, 1881, by Mary Ashley Townsend, 
Copyright, 1895, by Mary Ashley Townsend. 



Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Phiiadelphia, U.S.A. 



lSS2. 



TO 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 



To thee, whose home is in a nation's heart, 
Thii book of songs that I have dared to sing. 
With tender love and reverence I bring. 
As one a flower 7vight proffer and depart 

Whence Praise, Affection, Honor, Truth, and Art 
Have proudly lavished many a greater thing. 
Due him who acts, with noble rendering. 
In life'' s great drama, his allotted part. 

Would what I bring were many times more rare. 
More worthy of thy genius and thy fame. 
Thy sweet, brave nattire — thy attempered wit ; 

The clustering honois it is thine to wear. 
And zvorthier far of thy illustrious name. 
Which doth illume the page whereon Uis ivrit ! 



^Ji^^s^ A^^^ec: ^r,^ ^ 

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CONTENTS. 



Page 

Down the Bayou 9 

" Le roi est mort " 2G 

St. Julienne 29 

AsHMED, the Rhymer 31 

Recuerdo 33 

The Swimmer 3(5 

Upon the Peaks 38 

Lost and Found 41 

L'Amour 45 

Carnival Song 47 

Louisiana to Massachusetts 59 

They Say , 52 

William Barron's Balcony 54 

The Summer 60 

Flora McDonald 62 

My Lady 65 

Asunder 68 

When 70 

Song 72 

Guy's Gold 73 



^1' CONTENTS. 

Page 

"What I saw in my Sleep 76 

In Dubio 78 

Creed 83 

To the Mexican Exiles 85 

Your Letter 87 

At the Chandeleur Islands 80 

He and She 91 

Dame Ailsie 03 

By the Bird-cage 98 

Olga 103 

Old Age to Time 106 

Rime 108 

The Equinox 109 

The Captain's Story. ... 110 

The Bather 133 

Gold 136 

From Year to Year 143 

The Grandmother's Prayer 146 

Life's Mutations 148 

At the Wheel 150 

Rilma's Farewell 153 

How Long ? 1 55 

In Dreams 157 

It Rains 159 

Up the Hill 161 

Ashes of Roses 166 

Not 168 

Surrendered 170 

Wayne 171 

A Woman's Wish 174 



CONTENTS. xui 

Page 

IIic Jacet 17G 

Two 179 

To Be Ibl 

" One for you, and one for me " 183 

Farewell to Mexico 185 

Eleanor 187 

My Soul 190 

The Christening 193 

Mystery 194 

The Wind 195 

Don't You Remember ? 19G 

Angele 201 

The Spectre's Bridal 208 

Next Year 215 

Embryo 217 

The Printing-Press 218 



DOWN THE BAYOU. 



WE drifted down the long lagoon, 
My Love, my Summer Love and I, 
Far out of sight of all the town. 
The old Cathedral sinking down. 
With spire and cross, from view below 
The borders of St. John's ba3'0u, 
As toward the ancient Spanish Fort, 
With steady prow and helm a-port, 
We drifted down, m}^ Love and I, 
Beneath an azure April sk}^ 
My Love and I, my Love and I, 
Just at the hour of noon. 

We drifted down, and drifted down, 
My Love, my Summer Love and I, 
Be3'0nd the Creole part of town, 
Its red-tiled roofs, its stucco walls, 
Its belfries, with their sweet bell-calls ; 
The Bishop's Palace, which enshrines 
Such memories of the Ursulines ; 
Past balconies where maidens dreamed 
Behind the shelter of cool vines ; 
1* 



10 DOWN THE BAYOU. 

Past open doors where parrots screamed ; 

Past courts where mingled shade and glare 

Fell thi"ough pomegranate boughs, to where 

The turbancd negress, drowsy grown, 

Sat nodding in her ample chair ; 

Be^^ond the joyance and the stress, 

Beyond the greater and the less, 

Beyond the tiresome noonda}- town. 

The parish prison's cupolas. 

The bridges, with their creaking draws, 

And man}' a convent's frown, — 

We drifted on, ni}' Love and I, 

Beneath the semi-tropic sk}', 

While from the clock-towers in the town 

Spake the meridian bells that said, — 

'T was morn — 't is noon — 

Time flies — and soon 

Night follows noon. 

Prepare ! Beware ! 

Take care ! Take care ! 

For soon — so soon — 

Night follows noon, — 

Dark night the noon, — 

Noon ! noon ! noon ! noon ! 

To right, to left, the tiller turned, 

In all its gaud, our painted prow. 

Bend after bend our light keel spurned, 

For sinuously the bayou's low 

Dark waters 'neath the sunshine burned. 



DOWN THE BAYOU. 11 

There, in that smiling southern noon, 

As if some giant serpent, wound 

Along the lush and mellow ground 

To mark the path we chose to go ■ 

When, in sweet hours remembered now, 

The long lagoon we drifted down ; 

My Love, my Summer Love and I, 

Far out of reach of all the town, 

Be3-ond the Ridge of Metairie, 

And all its marble villages 

Thronged with their hosts of Deaf and Dumb, 

Who, to the feet of Death have come 

And laid their earthl}- burdens down ! 

We drifted slow, we drifted fast, 

Bulrush and reed and blossom past, 

My Love, m^' Summer Love and I. 

As the chameleon pillages 

Its tint from turf, or leaf, or stone, 

Or flower it haps to rest upon, 

So did our hearts, that jo3'ous da}', 

From every beauty in our way 

Some new fresh tinge of beauty take. 

Some added gladness make our own 

From things familiar 3-et unknown. 

With scarce the lifting of an oar, . 
We lightly swept from shore to shore, — 
The hither and the thither shore, 
With scarce the lifting of an oar, — 



12 DOWN THE BAYOU. 

While far be^'ond, in distance wrapped, 
The eitj-'s Unes lay faintl}- mapped, — 
Its antique courts, its levee's throngs, 
Its rattling floats, its boatmen's songs. 
Its lowly and its lofty roofs. 
Its tramp of men, its beat of hoofs. 
Its scenes of peace, its brief alarms, 
Its narrow streets, its old Place d'Armes, 
Whose tragic soil of long ago 
Now sees the modern roses blow : 
All these in one vast cloud were wound, 
Of blurred and fainting sight and sound, 
As on we swept, m}" Love and I, 
Beneath the April sky together, 
In all the bloom}^ April weather, — 
My Love, my Summer Love and I, 
In all the blue and amber weather. 

We passed the marsh where pewits sung, 
M}^ Love, my Summer Love and I ; 
We passed the reeds and brakes among. 
Beneath the smilax vines we swung ; 
We grasped at lilies whitely drooping 
Mid the rank growth of grass and sedge, 
Or bending toward the water's edge, 
As for their own reflection stooping. 
Then talked we of the legend old, 
Wherein Narcissus' fate is told ; 
And turned from that to grander story 
Of heroed past or modern glory, 



DOWN THE BAYOU. 

Till the quaint town of New Orleans, 
Its Spanish and its French demesnes, 
Like some vague mirage of the mind, 
In Memor^-'s cloudlands lay defined ; 
And back and backward seemed to creep 
Commerce, with all her tangled tongues, 
Till Silence smote her lusty lungs. 
And Distance lulled Discord to sleep. 



We drifted down, and drifted down. 
My Love, m^' Summer Love and I. 
The wild bee sought the shadowed flower. 
Yet wet with morning's dew}' dower, 
While here and there across the stream 
A daring vine its frail bridge builded. 
As fair, as fragile as some dream 
Which Hope with hollow hand hath gilded. 
Now here, now there, some fisher's boat, 
B}' trudging fisher towed, would float 
Toward the town be3ond our eyes ; 
The drows}^ steersman in the sun. 
Chanting meanwhile, in drowsy tone, — 
Under the smiling April skies. 
To which the earth smiled back replies, — 
Beside his helm some barcarole. 
Or, in the common patois known 
To such as he before his da}". 
Sang out some ga}' chanson creole, 
And held his bark upon its way. 



14 DOWN THE BAYOU. 

Slowly along the old shell road 
Some aged negro, 'neath his load 
Of gathered moss and latanier 
Went shuffling on his homeward wa}' ; 
While purple, cool, beneath the blue 
Of that hot noontide, bravel}' smiled, 
With bright and iridescent hue. 
Whole acres of the blue-flag flower, 
The breathy Iris, sweet and wild, • 
That floral savage unsubdued. 
The g3'psy April's gypsy child. 

Now from some point of weedy shore 
An Indian woman darts before 
The light bow of our idle boat, 
In which, like figures in a di-eam, 
M}' Love, ni}- Summer Love and I, 
Adown the sluggish baj'ou float ; 
While she, in whose still face we see 
Traits of a chieftain ancestry. 
Paddles her pirogue down the stream 
Swiftly, and with the flexile grace 
Of some dusk Dian in the chase. 

As nears our boat the tangled shore. 
Where the wild mango weaves its boughs, 
And earlj' willows stoop their hair 
To meet the sullen baj'ou's kiss ; 
Where the luxuriant " creeper" throws 
Its eager clasp round rough and fair 



DOWN THE BAYOU. 15 

To climb toward the coming June ; 
Where the sly serpent's sudden hiss 
Startles sometimes the drowsy noon, — 
There the rude hut, banana-thatched, 
Stands with its ever open door ; 
Its yellow gourd hung up beside 
The crippled crone who, half asleep, 
In garments most grotesquely patched, 
Grim watch and ward pretends to keep 
Where there is naught to be denied. 



The castled crayfish shows his tower. 
Mud-built, half hidden in the weeds. 
Above his deftly sunken well ; 
And there the truant, in his hour 
Of idle aims and wanton needs. 
Will come with bit of scarlet bait. 
And, loitering long, will patient wait 
To drag the hermit from his cell. 
Beside the bank we smile to hear 
The breezy gossip of the plain 
'Come lightly to the listening ear ; 
The rushes whisper to the cane. 
The cane the spiked palmetto nears, 
The grasses rustle as they tell, 
Then runs the whisper back again, 
As if the olden secret grew. 
As secrets will, both old and new, 
That " Midas, he hath asses' cars." 



16 DOWN THE BAYOU. 

The white clouds drifted overhead, 
As on we passed, 1113' Love and I ; 
They sailed the sk}- like phantom ships 
With phantom freight, — their port a dream, 
Their course a careless idler's theme. 
Across the lush and lonesome marsh 
The heron's cry rose shrill and harsh ; 
O'er distant plains the cattle wound 
For noonday rest on shadowed ground ; 
And now we talked, and now we read 
The da^'-dream of some dreamer dead ; 
Or, trailing there our finger-tips 
In laz}' tides our frail bark under. 
Of heroes spoke with awe and wonder, 
Or poets named of some far da}', 
Who had bequeathed unto our time, 
In pages quaint of dolorous rh^'me, 
A heritage of 3-outhful loves. 
Which round their lives had seemed to play 
As summer lightning pla3's round warm 
Night-skies to which it brings no harm. 
Then flocks of golden butterflies 
Fluttered our painted prow before. 
Seeming to draw us shore from shore. 
The Love Queen's ribbon-guided doves, 
Which, so the mythic legend proves. 
Her chariot drew o'er roads of stars 
Whereon her wheels have left no scars, 
Were not more gorgeous in their dyes 
Than our unharnessed butterflies ; 



DOWN THE BAYOU. • 17 

As yellow as if all their wings 
Were made of golden wedding-rings, 
And silent as if each were made 
Of sweet things lovers leave unsaid. 

Still darkly winding on before, 
For half a dozen miles or more, 
Past leagues and leagues of lilied marsh, 
The murk}' ba3-ou swerved and slid, 
Was lost, and found itself again, 
And 3'et again was quickly hid 
Among the grasses of the plain. 
As gazed we o'er the sedg}' swerves. 
The wild and weedy water curves. 
Towards sheets of shining canvas spread 
High o'er the lilies blue and red. 
So low the shores on either hand. 
The sloops seemed sailing on the land. 

Now here, now there, among the sedge, 

As drifted on my Love and I, 

Were groups of idling negro girls. 

Half hid behind the swaying hedge 

Of wild rice nodding in the breeze. 

Barefooted by the ba3'0u's edge, 

Just where the water swells and swirls, 

They watched the passing of our boat. 

Some stood like caryatides 

With arms upraised to burdened heads ; 

Some, idly grouped among the weeds, 

B 



18 DOWN THE BAYOU. 

With arms about their naked knees, 
Or full length on the grasses cast, 
Grew into pictures as we passed. 
Our aimless course the}' idly noted, 
Then out across the lowlands floated 
Rude snatches of plantation songs, 
In that sweet cadence which belongs 
To their full-lipped, full-lunged race. 
We heard the rustle of the grass 
They parted wide to see us pass ; 
Our boat so neared their resting-place, 
We heard their murmurs of surprise. 
And glanced into their shining ej'es ; 
Then caught the rich, mellifluous strain 
That fell and rose, and fell again ; 
And listened, listened, till the last 
Clear note was mingled with the past. 

We drifted on, and drifted on, 
M}' Love, my Summer Love and I. 
All youth seemed like an April land, 
All life seemed like a morning sky. 
Like the white fervor of a star 
That burns in twilight skies afar, 
Between the azure of the da}^ 
And gates that shut the night away ; 
Bright as an Opliir jewel's gleam 
On some Egj'ptiau's swarth}' hand. 
About my heart one radiant dream 
Shone with a glow intense, supreme. 



DOWN THE BAYOU. 19 

Yet vague, withal, like some sweet sky 
We trust for sunshine, nor know wh}-. 
The reed birds chippered in the reeds, 
As drifted on my Love and I ; 
The sleepy saurian by the bank 
Slid from his sunny log, and sank 
Beneath the dank, luxuriant weeds 
That lay upon the bayou's breast. 
Like vernal argosies at rest. 

Like some blind Homer of the wood, — 

A king in beggared solitude, — 

Upon the wide, palmettoed plain, 

A giant C3'press here and there 

Stood in impoverished despair ; 

With leafless crown, with outstretched limbs, 

With mien of woe, with voiceless h^'mns. 

With mossj- raiment, tattered, gra}^ 

Waiting in dumb and sightless pain, 

A model posing for Dore. 

Aloft, on horizontal wing. 

We saw the buzzard rock and swing ; 

That sturdy' sailor of the air, 

Whose agile pinions have a grace 

That prouder plumes might proudl}' wear, 

And claim it for a kinglier race. 

From distant oak-groves, sweet and strong. 
The voicy mocking-bird gave song, — 



20 DOWN THE BAYOU. 

That plagiarist wliose note is known 
As eveiy bird's, j'ct all his own. 
As shuttles of the Persian looms 
Catch all of Nature's subtlest blooms, 
Alike her bount}- and her dole 
To weave in one bewildering whole, 
So has this subtile singer caught 
All sweetest songs, and deftl}' wrought 
Them into one entrancing score 
From his rejoicing heart to pour. 

Remembering that song, that sk}', 

" My Love," I say, " my Love and I " — 

" My Summer Love " — yet know not wh}^ 

We had been friends, we still were friends ; 

Where love begins and friendship ends. 

To both was like some new strange shore 

Which hesitating feet explore. 

There had we met, surprised to meet 

And glad to find surprise so sweet ; 

But not a word, nor sigh, nor token, 

Nor tender word unconscious spoken, 

Nor lingering clasp, nor sudden kiss. 

Had shown Love born of Friendship's broken, 

Golden, glorious chr3-salis. 

Each well content with each to dream, 
We drifted down that silent stream, 
Searching the book of Nature fair, 
To find each other's picture there, 



DOWN THE BAYOU. 21 

Lifting our eyes 

To name tlie skies 
Prophets of cloudless destinies, 
As down and down the long lagoon 
We swept that semi-tropic noon, 
Each one as sure love lay below 
The careless thoughts our lips might breathe, 
Or lighter laughter might unfold. 
As doth the earnest alchemist know 
Beneath his trusted crucibles glow 
Fires to transmute his dross to gold. 



The wind was blowing from the south 
When we had reached the bayou's mouth. 
My Love, m}- Summer Love and I. 
It laden came with rare perfumes, — 
With spice of bays, and orange blooms, 
And moss}' odors from the glooms 
Of cj'press swamps. Now and again, 
Upon the fair Lake Pontchartrain, 
White sails went nodding to the main ; 
And round about the painted hulls 
Darted the sailing, swooping gulls, 
Wailing and shrieking, as the}' flew 
Unrestingly 'twixt blue and blue. 
Like ghosts of drowned mariners 
Eising from deep sea sepulchres. 
To warn, with weird and woful lips, 
Who go down to tlic sea in ships. 



22 DOWN THE BAYOU. 

We moored our boat beside the moat 
Boneath the old Fort's crumbling wall. 
No sudden drum gave warning sharp, 
No martial order manned the Fort, 
No watchful step the bastion smote. 
No challenge from a sentry's throat 
Sent down to us its questioning call. 
No gleam of ba^'onet met the eye, 
No banner broadened 'gainst the sk}-, 
No clash of grounded arras was heard, 
No ringing cheer, no murmured word. 
No feet of armies marching b}'. 
From moat and scarp and counterscarp. 
From parapet to sallj^-port. 
All lay untenanted and mute. 
One grim, invisible sentinel. 
Silence, gave to us sad salute, 
Then died, as there our footsteps fell. 



We climbed the ramparts, hand in hand. 
My LoA'e, my Summer Love and I. 
There had the dumb, industrious moss 
Woven its tapestries across 
The ancient brickwork, with a touch 
Like Love, which, loving, giveth much. 
There, undisturbed, the lichen's slow, 
Gra}' finger all the walls along 
Had writ, in untranslated song. 
Its histor}" of the fair, low land, 



DOWN THE BAYOU. 23 

Its courtly dames, its maidens fair, 
Its men, brave, proud, and debonair. 
Its romance and its cliivahy, 
As known a hundred years ago. 



Softly the fragrant southern breeze 

From o'er the Mexic Gulf blew on, 

Stirring the blossomed orange-trees, 

And leafless groves of the pecan. 

O'er crumbling paths we laughing went, 

My Love, my Summer Love and I, 

Or o'er the hidden trenches bent, 

And lingered with a vague content 

On bastion and on battlement. 

There were the cannon, blear and black, 

Directed toward no foeman's track ; 

Swart battle's pun}' infants swung 

In the rude cradle of a time 

When dreams were dwarfs, invention j'oung, 

And science, with its white, sublime, 

Eternal face, 3'et scarcely' free 

From swaddles of its infancy. 

With deep throats void of even a threat, 

Prone on the grass-grown parapet 

In mute impotenc}' they lay. 

Up to the rigid mouth of one 

A clambering rose its way had spun : 

Freighting the air with sweet increase 

Of fragrance, lavished near and far, 



24 DOWN THE BAYOU. 

It clung there, like a kiss of Peace 

On the barbaric lips of War. 

With reverent hands we touched the strange, 

Mute relics, that so sternly spake 

Of strides that make the nations quake 

With awe before the march of change. 

To what might be, from what had been, 

Our thoughts o'er luminous courses swept. 

Till every boundary they o'erleapt 

That marks the untried and unseen. 

Then Doubt from her chill cloisters crept, 

Surrendering unto Progress there 

The rusting kej's of all the realms 

Dominioned by the dwarf. Despair ; 

And, wondering, conquered, awed, and dumb. 

She gazed toward the Yet to Come. 

Like one some gladness overwhelms. 
Till, in the joy with which 'tis rife 
Is drowned all dread of chancing grief, 
I laughed, I dreamed, that sunny day, 
And bound in one full fragrant sheaf 
The goldenest harvests of m}' life. 

And now, whene'er an April sky 
Bends o'er me like some vast blue bell ; 
When piping birds are in the reeds. 
And earth is fed on last year's seeds ; 
When newly is the live-oak's tent 
With tender green and gray besprent ; 



DOWN THE BAYOU. 25 

When wailing gulls are on the lake, 
And woods are fair for April's sake ; 
When grassy plains their secrets tell, 
And lilies with white wonder look 
At other lilies by the brook ; 
When thrills the wild rice in the wind, 
And cries the heron shrill and harsh 
Along the lush and lonely marsh ; 
When in the grove the mocker sings, 
And earth seems full of new-made things. 
And Nature to all youth is kind, — 
Once more, as in a vision, seem 
To rise before me lake and stream ; 
Once more a semi-tropic noon, 
A boat upon a long lagoon ; 
Two figures there, as in a dream. 
Come, strangely dear and strangely nigh, 
To touch me, and to pass me by. 
And, as they pass, once more I seem 
To see, beneath the April sky, 
In all the blue and silver weather, 
M}' Love, my Summer Love and I, 
Drift down the long lagoon together ! 



«LE ROI EST MORT." 



U 



IGHT all the lamps 
In the temples of the skies ; 
Keep them trimmed and burning ; 
In extremis lies 
The Year. 
Watch by the corpse, Arcturus, when he dies ! 

Bid them all hither, 
The congregations of stars, 
Their high-priests and sages, 

Their crowned kings and czars. 
The Year 
Is dead ; Uranus, vigil keep, and Mars ! 

He has gone hence 
From the palaces of Time — 
Hark ! for the roj'al sleeper 
How the planets chime ; 
While Earth, 
Chief mourner, mourns the King dead in his prime. 



"LE ROI EST MORT." 27 

Under the dome 
Of midnight carry his bier. 
Come, ye constellations, 

Gaze on him shrouded here ; 
Each thread 
Of his winding-sheet is a human smile or a tear. 



Swing o'er his bed 
Those hopes and fruitless schemes, 
Those vain evanishings. 
That drift of dreams 
Called Life ! 
Alcj'one, light the censer with thy beams ! 



His cold, cold couch 
Lies frosty under the moon ; 
Weep, ye gentle Pleiades ! 
L3'ra's harp in tune 
Shall keep 
Time to j'our tears for the King dead so soon. 



How pale he lies 
In the shadow}' aisle of Time ! 
In the catafalque of Ages 
Silentl}' sublime 
He sleeps. 
Ye stars ! chant together as in Creation's prime. 



28 "LE llOI EST MORT." 

Bear forth the dead, 
Through the valleys of the skies, 
To far sidereal regions 

Where lone and solemn lies 
The Past, — 
That vault whose gate Memory guards and glorifies. 



Farewell, dead King, 
Into whose treasury poured 
The hopes and fears of millions : 
Hide thou th}- hoard 
Within 
The mystic sanctuaries of The Unrestored ! 



ST. JULIENNE. 



\ EARE and radiant girlish face, 

Touched with a tender, saintl}' grace ; 

A brow of meekl}^ proud reserve. 
Sign of a cross on its patient curve ; 

Her locks the hue of rich, dead gold. 
About an innocent forehead scrolled ; 

E^'es whose opaline lustre beams. 
Pure as a poet's holiest dreams ; 

Cheek as a polished sea-shell fair, 
Sweet lips, half laughter and half pra3'er ; 

A smile exceeding sweet, and yet 

Pained with the pang of some past regret ; 

A soul that loftily soars and sighs, 
Yet leading Self to the sacrifice ; 



30 ST. JULIENNE. 

A heart as noble as ever rung 

Its truthfulness out on a truthful tongue ; 

Silently suffering, brave to endure, 
Patiently pra^'erful, prayerfully pure ; 

Gifted, glorious, half divine, 

A heavenly soul in an earthly shrine, 

By women praised, and adored by men, 
Radiant, rare St. Julienne ! 



ASHMED, THE RHYMER. 



HE strode before the world and audience claimed ; 
It spurned him as unheralded, unfamed, 
And sent him from its presence bowed, ashamed. 

He turned, like one wrong cannot render meek, 
And said, as burned the world's blow on his cheek, 
" Yet will I come ; men jet shall hear me speak ! " 

Swept the swift years. They had forgot each other, 
As friend doth friend forget, and brother brother ; 
The world, the poet, knew not one another. 

Then one da}', swiftl}', like a rocket's flame, 
A poet's thought went up the sky of Fame, 
And lo ! men clamored for the poet's name. 

Ashmed, the rh^'mer, raised his head and heard. 
Within his bosom something wistful stirred ; 
But silent stood he, uttering not a word. 



32 ASHMED, THE RHYMER. 

" Poet," the world cried, " from thy hidden ways 
Come forth ; and be thou crowned with poet's bays ! 
Fame waits to name thee with impassioned praise." 

Still Ashmed listened, muttering, "If one strong. 
True voice hath aided Right, or silenced Wrong, 
'Tis well ; what matters it who sung the song? 

" 'T is after all the kingdom, not the king ; 
Not seasons, but the harvest seasons bring ; 
Not poets, but the songs that poets sing. 

"And worthless is the thing that men call fame, 
And frail the bar 'twixt glor}' and 'twixt shame, 
Frail that ei^hemeral shadow called ' a name.' 

" Greatness ma}' come to those who sit in state, 
And glory unto them who ' stand and wait.' 
Naught comes to him for whom all comes too late ! " 

Then he, like one of sore temptation rid, 
Back to his cell with monkish footsteps slid ; 
And from the whole world Ashmed's face was hid. 



"RECUERDO!" 



" JDECUj^RDO!" si, amigo! 

Sweet remembrance bears me far, 
Where the Toltee temples crumble, 

Where the Aztec ruins are, 
Where the broad banana's banner 

Droops above the bamboo hut. 
Where the plumy palm-tree presses 

To its heart the milky nut. 

" Recuerdo!" at the magic 

Music of your Mexic word, 
How my pulses beat within me, 

How my heart is thrilled and stirred ! 
At its soft, sj'llabic murmur, 

Strange enchantment round me falls ; 
And again I see the moonlight 

Gleam on Montezuma's halls ; 

And I see the Indian children 
Pla}' beneath the mango-trees, 

While the breath of orange orchards 
Scents the palpitating breeze ; 
2* c 



34 "RECUERDO!" 

And I hear the clank of sabres, 
And the mustang's eager neigh, 

As the mounted guard dash briskly 
Down the desolate highway. 

Icy-bearded Orizaba^ 

Clothed in snow and crowned with cloud ; 
White and mute Iztaccihuatl ., 

Slumbering in her frozen shroud ; 
Cordova's fair coffee forests, 

Cerro del Borrego's height, 
Many-meadowed Metlac lying 

In her vallej^ of delight ; 

Skies that arch in matchless splendor 

Matchless plains that lie below ; 
Marble hills that grandl}' girdle 

Marble-mansioned Mexico ; 
White-cathedralled Guadalupe, 

Cortez's Noche Triste camp, — 
Rise, as rose Aladdin's palace, 

B}' the rubbing of his lamp ; 

And I see beside the fountains 

Dusk}' maidens smile and nod. 
While I tread the ancient courtwaj's 

Which the Aztec Emperor trod. 
And the Caballeros gayly 

Laugh, and, laughing, gayly ride 
Down the path where Guatimozin 

Turned upon his foes and died. 



" RECUIillDO ! '* 35 

All adown the Eio Chalco^ 

From the islanded lagoon, 
Indian barges wander slowly 

In the amethystine noon ; 
Brown canoes with scarlet poppies 

From the floating gardens float, 
While some native minstrel lightly 

Strikes the Bandalone's note. 

Yonder, by the ruined arches, 

And along the convent walls, 
Picturesque where all is picture. 

An unfriended beggar crawls ; 
Where Chapultepec's grim castle 

Its defiant shadow flings, 
Halts the wretch whose veins inherit 

Blood, mayhap, that warmed its kings. 

'■'' Recuerdo!" si, ami go! 

Sweet remembrance bears me far, 
Where the Toltec temples perish, 

Where the Aztec's idols are. 
" Recuerdo ! " at that whisper 

What glad echoes are recaught. 
What mnemonic worlds are moulded 

From the nebula of thought ! 



THE SWIMMER. 



a OLDEN-BEARDED and sunny-haired, 
Strength in each knotted muscle laired, 
Ivor3'-limbed, on the bold headland, 
A breathing statue, behold him stand ! 

A leap, a plunge, and the foamy flood 
Clasps to its breast the laughing blood, 
While the pliant arms like marble shine 
In the bold embrace of the buoyant brine; 

Down, where shudder the cold seaweeds, 
To pastures where the porpoise feeds. 
Where the drum-fish beats his mystic drum. 
And the silver mullet glides shy and dumb ; 

Up, to the light, on the breezy billow, 
The wave his couch, and its crest his pillow ; 
To dive, to float, to sink, to swim, 
Deli2;ht in each luxurious limb ! 



THE SWIMMER. 37 

Stroke on stroke, now awa}", away — 
Swimmer and billow both at play ; 
While sea nymphs blend, with fingers weird. 
The green of the wave with the gold of his beard. 

Upward now is his bare, broad breast, 
Stretched on the wave he lies at rest ; 
Over his forehead the waters dip, 
And lave the smile on his swarthy lip. 

Swift-winged curlews swim the air, 
Clouds creep out of their lofty lair ; 
While now on the wave, now on the wing. 
The sea-gull screams like a human thing. 

Once and again, with an agile grace, 
He to the wave turns his ruddy face ; 
The soft, sweet wind blows out of the south, 
And lifts the brine to his bearded mouth. 

Parting the billows on either hand, 
Glowing and dripping, he gains the land ; 
Shakes from his locks and limbs the dew. 
Wrings his beard, and is gone from view. 



UPON THE PEAKS. 



T STAND and gaze, from Shenandoah's height, — 
-'- The western sun goes grandly to his doom ; 
Day masks herself as the gray nun, Twilight, 

And weaves weird garments upon sunset's loom. 
The p3"ramidic pines uprear their heads, 

Crowned with their crowns of everlasting green, 
While o'er the mountain top the 3'oung moon sheds 

Her mellow glorj' on the silent scene ! 

"Within the cedar copse the partridge beats 

A fond recall upon his mystic drum. 
To paint the dying year in her retreats, 

In russet gown has sombre Autumn come. 
The hectic flush is on the maple's cheek, 

A sallow hue the homely hickory wears, — 
Some favor in the artist's e^'e to seek. 

Her graceful limbs the slender sapling bares. 

The timid pigeon folds her dusky wings 
Within the shadow of the woody way ; 



UPON THE PEAKS. o9 

Beyond the chirring squirrel chattering springs 

To lead the eager hunter far astray. 
The lonely whip-poor-will's unanswered note 

In iterant cadence thrills from 3-onder wood, 
Like human 3'earnings that around us float, 

Acknowledged, felt, 3'et never understood. 

The rattlesnake among the brushwood winds, 

A sightless wanderer in these autumn da3's ; 
The cooling streamlet he b}' instinct finds, 

Then coils beneath the dogwood's crimson blaze. 
The wild clematis, prone to toy and tease, 

Her white cap tosses archly to the wind ; 
Then, like a hoj'den, climbs the naked trees 

With witching grace, half savage, half refined. 

In ruins lie the might}- oaks and pines, 

By time hewn down a hundred years agone, — 
Proud columns torn from nature's solemn shrines, 

To crumble hei-e unmourned, unmissed, unknown. 
The wintry- winds rush o'er them unrestrained, 

The lichen wraps them in its velvet shroud, — 
By mortal touch their grandeur unprofaned, 

By mortal hand their majestj' unbowed. 

Wave after wave, the hills their heads uprear ; 

Afar, the billowy mountains boldly rise. 
Like waters checked in full and mad career. 

Toward the blue illimitable skies ; 



40 UPON THE PEAKS. 

In motionless magnificence tliey stand, 
The azure peali, the undulating hill, — 

Wild seas to which, in gentle reprimand, 

The voice of Christ has murmured, " Peace, be still ! 

What, to the seal of all-transcendent Power 

Here stamped on crag, and rock, and rent abj'ss, 
Was ancient Babylon in her happiest hour, 

Or Thebes, or Tj^re, or proud Persepoiis? — 
What were Palmyra's palaces to these ? 

Her sculptured fanes to such God-written pages, — 
These mountain kings of mountain monarchies. 

These sage instructors of the proudest sages? 

Ye hoary peaks ! ye proud exulting heights ! 

Ye stony sponsors for the passing ^-ears ! 
For you Time hath no changes, Death no blights, 

And Life no mildew, miser}', nor tears. 
The solemn centuries, marching to the tomb 

In changing ranks, unchanging will ye see ; 
Till clashing cj'cles toll the hout of doom, 

That merges Time into Eternity. 



LOST AND FOUND. 



T GST ! a sunnj-'featared child, 
-*-^ Winsome, waj'ward, loving, wild,— 
Blooming cheeks and amber tresses, 
Lisping speech and sweet caresses ; 
Lost, lost, lost, lost ! 
Have her feet th}" pathwa^^ crossed? 

Lost! oh, listen ! lost! a child. 
Fair, and dear, and undefiled ; 
Lost ! all those iinworded blisses 
Garnered in a baby's kisses ; 
Lost, lost, lost, lost ! 
Spare her, world ! thy fire, thy frost I 

Coaxing lips and stainless brow, 
Eyes like violets under snow. 
Dimples, where the Witch of Laughter 
Hid, and drew the roses after ; 
Lost, lost, lost, lost ! 
Winds ! where are her tresses tossed ? 



42 LOST AND FOUND. 

Child, such as the artist saint, 
Raffaelle Sanzio, loved to paint, 
When he put in angel places 
Little, happ3', human faces ; 
Lost, lost, lost, lost ! 
Seas, hath she your billows crossed? 

"Who will bring my darling back 
To my desolate life track, — 
Back with all her wayward winning. 
Artless arts, and sinless sinning ? 
Lost, lost, lost, lost ! 
Earth, hath she thy boundaries crossed? 



FOUND. 



"Tj^OUND ! a maiden tall and slender, — 
E^-es of strange, magnetic splendor ; 
Lips, whose coaxing crimson teaches 
To m}'^ heart its tenderest speeches ; 
Hands that lie to-da}' in mine, 
l^ilgrims resting at a shrine ; 
Calm, courageous, girlish mouth ; 
Bi'cath as sweet as zeph}rs south 



FOUND. 43 

Which, o'er brake and over brine, 
Bear orange scents and jessamine. 
Mingled with a rare discreetness, 
Hath she fascinating sweetness ; 
With a woman's soul intense 
Linked a child's fresh confidence. 
Found ! whose bab}- locks I curled, — 
Found, " unspotted from the world," — 
Found, found, found, found. 
Whom I sought the earth around ! 



All the witching arrogance 
Of happiness her charms enhance ; 
In her lithesome, leopard grace 
Lies a rare ancestral trace ; 
In the pose of her j'oung head, 
Pride and gentleness inbred ; 
In her gestures, free from guile, 
In her glance, and in her smile, 
Lightl}- lies the fact disguised, 
The woman has the child surprised ! 
All my lost one's curls are there, 
In her braids of golden hair ; 
All my little one's caresses 
In the maiden's gentle kisses ; 
All of childhood's better part 
In the maiden's warm, 3'oung heart. 
Found, found, found, found ! 
Hath the earth a sladder sound? 



44 FOUND. 



Found ! oh, hear me ! found ! a woman ■ 
Most angelical!}- human ; 
All the child's imperfect sweetness 
Rounded to a rare completeness. 
"Worldly evil — deed nor word — 
Never from her brow has stirred 
The white, white bird of innocence 
Resting there with reverence. 
Infanc}^ has dowered her 3-outli 
With its pureness and its truth. 
On the ills that round her be, 
Falls her sunny charity. 
At the candor of her lips 
Falsehood shudders in eclipse. 
Living for exalted aims. 
True to all life's noblest claims, 
I have found her — undefiled. 
In the woman all the child ! 



L'AMOUR. 



I SEARCHED the garden of my heart, 
And found a strange flower there ; 
Its breath was sweet 
In the lone retreat, 
And its m^'stie face 
Ilhimined the place, 
Where from other blossoms it bloomed apart. 

I touched its petals bright and rare. 

And said, " Whence art thou, O flower? 
A wondrous grace 
I see in thy face ; 

Take root in my heart. 
For no more we part " — 
Came the chilling whisper, " Beware ! beware ! 

I smiled and bent the bloom above ; 
" Who warneth me thus?" I said. 
" I am blessing and blight, 
I am pain and delight, 



46 L' AMOUR. 

I am drought and dew, 
I am Laurel and Rue, 
I am all things in one ; my name is Love ! " 

"With joy supreme my soul was rife ; 
I gathered and wear the flower : 
It is blessing and balm, 
It is rapture and calm. 
It is wisdom and truth, 
It is beauty and 3'outh, 
And ermine, and sceptre, and crown of life ! 



CARNIVAL SONG. 



T ONG live the King ! shout, one and all ! 
"^^ Long live the King of the Carnival, 

The King and his merry Court ! 
Greet him with shout, and cheer, and song, 
For oh ! life's Lenten days are long, 

Its Carnival is short. 

Long live the King ! though brief may be 
His regal pomp and pageantry ; 

Some good must follow after 
A swaj' unblemished by a tear, 
A. rule unclouded by a care, — 

One royal reign of laughter ! 

His name is heard in every hall ; 
His banner floats from every wall, 

Like some benignant pinion 
Which in its ro^'al plumage bears 
Respite to all from one day's cares 

Throughout the King's dominion. 



48 CARNIVAL SONG. 

Most sovereign Grace ! an easy thing 
It is for an}' crowned king 

To set Grief's tear-drops running ; 
Thine aim, to grant to every lip 
From pleasure's bowl one harmless sip, 

Requires more dexterous cunning. 



Rejoice, O Sire ! that thine it is 
To add some mite to human bliss, 

To make some lives the brighter. 
How few can sa}' that for one day 
The world was happier for their sway, 

One single heart the lighter ! 



Ma}' ever}' subject bend the knee 
In glad allegiance unto thee, 

O King of fun and folly ! 
The old be young, the young be gay, 
The brown locks mingle with the gray, 

And all the world be jolly. 



What though the snow be on the hair. 
And all be dim, once debonair. 

The heart grows aged never ; 
Its sap is the sap of the evergreen, 
And 'neath thy sceptre's magic sheen 

Will flow as fresh as ever. 



CARNIVAL SONG. 49 

Then live the King ! shout, one and all ! 
Long live the King of the Carnival ! 

Greet him with shout and song. 
All hail, the King and his merry Court i 
For oh ! life's Carnival is short, 

Its Lenten season lone. 



LOUISIANA TO MASSACHUSETTS. 



'TT^IIROUGH the ambient spaces swinging, hark, 

■*- Comes a voice of welcome ringing ! Darlc 
And heav}- has mv heart lain broken, while 
It longed for one such token, one such smile, 

Massachusetts ! 



I have bowed in dust and ashes, scarred 
Foully by defiling lashes, marred 
B3' those who, in my proud and palmy days, 
Loved best to twine my balmy wreath of bavs, 

Massachusetts. 

I have drooped, despised in anguish, — yea, 
Foes have laughed to see me languish ; thev 
Have cursed me, scourged me, and upbraided — gods ! 
I lay unarmed, unaided 'neath their rods, 

Massachusetts i 

But, in hours of my unsparing woe. 
Flood and Famine at me staring, — lo ! 



LOUISIANA TO MASSACHUSETTS. 51 

I, groping helpless, faint and gasping, there 
A hand felt clasping mine in mj' despair, 
Massachusetts ! 

And that hand poured forth its treasure, fair, 
Golden, without stint or measure, where 
It fed and feeds like heavenly manna yet. 
And Louisiana never can forget 

Massachusetts. 

From thy hearth was caught the ember brand 
Which fired the souls of my September band ; 
My martyred heroes rushed to battle then, 
And Concord's musket-rattle rang again, 
Massachusetts ! 

Sisters, from one sire descended, we 
Tyrants' chains alike have rended. See ! 
Louisiana, wronged, blasphemed, undone, 
Now free, redeemed, responds to Lexington, 
Massachusetts. 

New Orleans, Nov. 29, 1874. 



THEY SAY. 



'npHEY say 't is perfect weather ; that the days 

-*- Are strangel}' lovely, and the long nights fair ; 
That down the lanes the laughing Autumn comes 

With purple asters in her golden hair. 
They say her slender feet are hid in bloom, 

That in her crown the golden-rod is glad ; 
In scarfs of wild peas and of passion-vines, 

They say her form is beautifully clad. 

The}" sa}" the forests never were so fair ; 

The distant skies, they sa}-, were never bluer ; 
And they that clasp hands send a whisper down, 

To sa}' that never yet were true hearts truer. 
They say the white waves on the scrolled beach 

Sing to the white stars in the clear night sk}- ; 
They sa}' the pine-tree on the sand}^ shore 

Is Summer's harp, on which she chants " Good-b}'." 

They saj' the late bird, in the orange-boughs, 
Fills with a music shower his leafy lair ; 

That each note, perfected by Summer's hand, 
Drops like a jewel through the yellow air. 



THEY SAY. 

For me, alas ! for me, the late bird sings 

Of Summer hopes that lost themselves in calms, 

And left me standing, with a starving heart, 

At Autumn's gates, with hands too proud for alms. 



WILLIAM BARRON'S BALCONY, 

TACUBAYA, MEXICO. 



BENEATH my feet a wondrous garden lies. 
So rich its mass of color, light, and shade, 
Its blended tints, its contrast of rare hues, 
'T is like the Persian's magic mat of old. 
There waiting but tlie pressure of a foot, 
The utterance of a wish, to bear one hence. 

Chained unto Wealth's all-conquering chariot wheel. 

Stand India's floral queens, and Afric's palms. 

Beneath the frigid glitter of snow peaks 

Fair tropic captives keep their native bloom, 

In beaut3''s pride def^'ing an}' fate. 

Cedars are there, the rarest of their race, 

Whose ancestors were great in Lebanon. 

The Eucah'ptus straightens its tall form 

Until its head is reared so high in air 

Men look in wonder at its lofty crown. 

And one, a simple poet, says, " Perhaps 

It hath a human longing in its heart, 



WILLIAM BARRON'S BALCONY. 55 

And hastens upward, hoping for a height 
From which it may behold its native home 
In far-away AustraUa's sea-girt soil." 

Among the shadows, labj-rin thine walks 
Beguile the feet toward enchanting groves ; 
Toward caverns guarded by the graven gods 
Which Aztec worshippers adored and feared ; 
Toward grottos, formed so cunningly by man, 
Nature herself claims credit of his work, 
And smiling tells, in each delusive spot, 
In chasm, cascade, dripping rock and gorge. 
In broken paths and sudden dungeon glooms. 
In rugged rift and briery opening, 
" The height of art is all art to conceal." 

Long lakes, in ferny borders framed, give back 
The azure of the sky. Swimming swans 
Grace the reflective waters, and the sound 
Of tinkling fountains thrills the balm}' air, 
Just making silence audible. 

Far beyond 
The rare exotics and the perfect lawns, 
Rises the rocky and historic height 
On which, in quaint and picturesque grandeur, stands 
The grand old castle of Chapultepec. 
Beside the broad road winding at its base. 
Among the antique baths and sculptures old. 
Tower the giant cypress-trees which struck 
Their first roots here in centuries unknown 



56 WILLIAM BARRON'S BALCONY. 

To those they sheltered centuries ago. 
Their boughs were mighty in the grand old days 
When proud, imperious Montezuma loved 
To gather 'neath them nobles of his Court, 
And the dusk faces of his thousand wives. 
Under their shelter Guatimozin stood. 
The young, heroic, martj'red Aztec Prince, 
When conquering princes built the scorching fires 
Under his faithful and unflinching feet. 

Kings and their kingly races have passed on ; 

But by the castle gates the cypresses, 

Draped in their swinging scarfs of pendent moss, 

Stand in their uncrowned kingiiness calmly there, 

Like gray-locked bards from Odin's ancient halls. 

And proudly chant " the days of the years of the Past." 

Gelid as polar ice, dumb as dumb death, 
Upon the right, Iztaccihuatl soars. 
Rigid and awful in a ghastl}' shroud. 
She lies outstretched upon her lofty bier, 
While round her stiffened throat, departing day 
A scintillant gorget clasps of crimson light. 
Smitten from anvils of the setting sun. 

Beyond her, pallid Popocatepetl ! 
Autocrat of heights, upon whose head 
The keen, censorious centuries have laid 
No gra}', rebuking finger of decaj', 



WILLIAM BAllRON'S BALCONY. 57 

He lifts aloft his time-anointed brow 
As radiantly serene, and smooth, and white 
As some pure page which lies as yet unwrit 
'Neath the Recording Angel's lifted hand. 
Before his icy scrutiny lies spread 
The vale of Anahuac, a palimpsest 
Whereon the writing of to-day blots out 
The occult hieroglyphs of 3-esterday. 

So he beheld the coming of that race 

Which peopled first these plains. So he looked on 

The hands that hewed their stones, and reared their mounds, 

And builded up their temples. So he read 

Their lost, mj-sterious histories, and saw 

The unrecorded splendors of their reign. 

He keeps the secret of their graven gods. 

Their altars, and their wild idolatries. 

He knows whence came the}^, whither they have gone ; 

And all which hungering savans 3'earn to know 

He holds between his grim lips, telling naught. 

He sees the arch outlast the architect. 

The shrine survive its worshipper, the dome 

Glitter undimmed above its builder's dust. 

Himself the centre of the cj'clone Change, 

Mutations move him not. Men come and go, 

Science works its miracles, worlds revolve. 

Battle and Famine crowd against each other. 

The lance of Knowledge bears down Ignorance ; 

But midst all changes he unchanging stands, 

His foot on buried kingdoms, and his crown 



"^8 WILLIAM BARRON'S BALCONY. 

Shining upon the key that could unlock 
The mystic portals of Antiquity. 

Hushed as the hopes a lover dares not breathe, 
Lest speech should break the magic of love's spell, 
Fair and afar the vale of Mexico, 
With its strange beaut}' and its wasted powers. 
The e3'e rejoices, and the thought aggrieves. 
'Neath Evening's stroking fingers, soothed and calm, 
It lies among its fragrant shadows, like 
Some Eastern Queen who indolenth- courts 
Repose beneath the scented fan, slow- waved 
Above her bj- some Odalisk's patient hand. 

On every side the milk}' mague}- grows. 
Resting upon the soil like tufts of plumes 
Which some despairing chieftain band of yore, 
Suddenh' sinking from existence, left 
Behind to tell it was — and is no more. 

Laden with bales of modern merchandise, 
A troop of plodding donke^-s jonder winds 
Toward the dusty road that leads along 
The arches of that ancient aqueduct 
Which, to the eager lips of Cortez, brought 
The cool, sweet waters from the rugged hills, — 
A blessing from the hands he came to smite. 

In middle distance, dark and motionless, 
Against a ruined column dreamilv 



WILLIAM BARRON'S BALCONY. 59 

An Indian woman leans, with gaze tliat seems 

Fixed on the faded glories of her tribe. 

Close to Iier breast a slumbering child is held ; 

Another stands half hidden in the garb 

That picturesquely drapes the unconscious grace 

Which is the mother's savage heritance. 

So statuesque the form of each and all, 

They seem a group chiselled in murk obsidian. 

Fronting the eye, a league or more away, 
On Tenochtitlan's site stands Mexico, 
The splendid city of the splendid plain. 
Its moss-grown domes, its ancient Moorish towers, 
Its crumbling convents and its fountained courts, 
Its palace portals and its time-stained gates, 
Rise, where Tezcuco's waters once were blue, 
And view this land of conquered conquerors. 

The purple hills clasp hands around its walls, 
The unrivalled skies pour their rich splendor down. 
The sunset fades, and o'er the darkening plain, 
Out from their tall towers, slow and mournfully 
The solemn bells of the Cathedral peal ! 



THE SUMMER. 



I 



"T came with bloom, 
And sweet perfume, 

And brooksongs low and tender ; 
With pinks awake, 
For Summer's sake. 

And daN's and nights of splendor. 
It came with birds, 
And low of herds, 

And j-outhful footsteps strajing 
Beyond the yields 
Of harvest fields. 

While farmer folk went haying. 



Now Summer's dawn 
And dusk are gone ; 

And Autumn winds come stra3Mng 
Through lane and wood, 
AVhere erst we stood 

When farmer folk wont haying. 



THE SUMMER. 61 

But all it brought, 

And all it taught, 
That Summer mid the mowing, 

And what was said. 

While cheeks grew red, — 
What would ye give for knowing? 



FLORA Mcdonald. 



THVEAD in the morgue there, nobody claiming her, 
^-^^ Nobod}' watching beside the young head, 
Nobody missing her, nobody naming her, 
Nobody mourning because she is dead. 

Out in the night-wind the street lamps flare wearily, 
Autumn leaves down from their branches are whirled ; 

Yonder, with dead ej'elids folded down drearily, 
Poor human leaf drifted out of the world ! 

Nobody mourning her, no one so daring, 
Poor fragile wreck on life's desolate shore ; 

Only a Christ dares to share such despairing, 
Murmur forgiveness, and " Go, sin no more." 

Youthful and fair once, white-souled and so winning. 
Pure as the purest that ever drew breath, 

Fresh as a flower in its bud and beginning, — 
Love, with a kiss, stung its beaut}' to death ! 



FLOiiA McDonald. ' G3 

Poor wretched heart, with no arms to enfold it, 
Cheated and wronged of its tenderest needs, — 

Like some frail vine, with no good thing to hold it, 
Turning at last to entwine about weeds ! 

Out on life's stage to find all the crowd hissing her, 
Shuddering and striving to hide her poor face ; 

Eeaching for aims that forever were missing her, 
Fainting and falling to shame and disgrace. 

But in the morgue there is no more to worry her : 
Charit}', Love, nor Uprightness draw near ; 

Too cleanly Purity e'en to help bury her. 
Virtue too holy to give her a tear. 

Hark ! comes a sound from the ranks unrespected, 
Murmur of voices — a woman's kind tone — 

Sa3'ing, " 'Tis shameful to leave her neglected, 
Friendless, forsaken, and dead here alone. 

" Come 3'e here, women ! Our fingers shall spin her 
Shroud white as any for saint in the land ; 

We are all sinners, — and she was a sinner, — 
Let her receive Christian rites at our hand. 

" Poor murdered creature ! our hearts know the aching, 
Love, turned a liar, can give with a sneer ; 

All of ns know just what cruel forsaking 

Shattered this girl's life and hurried her here. 



64 FLORA McDonald. 

" Coffin her tendeii}-, shroud her all whiteh', 
Twine ye the roses in cross and in crown ; 

Place her tired feet and hands decently, rightly." 
So did these women there, — they " of the town." 

They to that shrine in the morgue brought the preacher, 
Wept they for her whom nobodj- would own, 

As fell the words of Christ Jesus, the Teacher, 
" Who without sin, let him cast the first stone." 

So did they bury her, — the}' the unholy ; 

So did they give her their pit}- and care ; 
So they wept for her, the lost and the lowly, — 

Won the deed no recognition Up There ? 

Aye ! on the page which the angel was smiting 
With sins of the Lost, a great glory swept down, 

Setting across them in luminous writing 

This deed of the women there, — they " of the town." 



MY LADY. 



There she stands — 
Looking along the low and level lands, 
To where the sea's pulse beats upon the sands ; 
A scarlet blossom in her quiet hands — 

My Lady ! 

Tall and fair, 
Slender and pliant as young willows are ; 
From arching foot to crown of braided hair, 
Beauty 's supreme and undisputed heir — 

My Lady ! 

Richer glows, 
Her brow's immaculate ivory now shows ; 
Dipped in a blush, Thought's tender pencil throws, 
On each fair cheek, the warm light of a rose — 

My Lady ! 

Through the pines 
An unexpected sunbeam slanting shines, 
And, softening more the more that it declines, 
The barren landscape brightens and refines- 

Supremely. 



66 MY LADY. 

Searching there, 
It finds My Lady with her young head bare ; 
And, steaUng seaward, darts with regal care 
A golden arrow through her golden hair — 

My Lady ! 

Her gray e^^es 
Lift themselves upward, dreamy and cloud-wise, 
To wander past aerial argosies, 
And seek an eye-path to the sunset skies — 

My Lady ! 

For she knows, 
Toward the scaffold of the west there goes 
Each eve a veiled young Day, who meekly bows 
Beneath Time's sure and unrelenting blows — 

My Lady ! 

She has stood 
Oft and again, as now, in pensive mood 
Between the salty sea and piny wood, 
While the vast Occident blazed with sunset's blood — 

My Lady ! 

And the crime 
Spilled its red splendor on the blue sublime. 
And splashed the white stars with its crimson grime, 
Until Night sponged it from the walls of time — 

My Lady ! 



MY LADY. 67 

Now she stands, 
And looks along the low and level lands 
To where the still sky stoops to stiUer sands ; 
The scarlet flower forgotten lu her hands — 

My Lady ! 

' Oh for grace 
To paint the sweet, strange beauty of her face, 
In whose exquisite lineaments I trace 
The lordliest sigils of her lordl}^ race — 

My Lady ! 

A memory, 
A dream of one fair dreamer by the sea. 
In her unusual beauty she must be 
Through all the future of my life to me — 

My Lady ! 

Standing there, 
She looks so pure, so marvellousl}^ fair. 
She seems like some embodied Christian praj'er 
Which hastening angels seek to heavenward bear — 

My Lady ! 

Yet I dare 
To lay m^' soul where her feet resting are, 
Believing she can lift it up afar, 
Beyond the sunset, and the sunset star — 
, My Lady ! 



ASUNDER. 



T MOURN ! O Love, what miles of sky, 
-*- What weary, weary miles of sea, 
Stretch out beneath, stretch out on high, 
In maddening immensity. 

My darling one, 'twixt you and me ! 

Ten thousand pleasures lie between, 

Ten thousand thousand hearts of care ; 
But whatsoever intervene. 
For me one woe spans all the scene, 
That I am here and thou art there. 

To Nature's feast of sweet perfumes. 

In saintl}' white and stainless union. 
Come stealing forth from verdant glooms 
The proud Magnolia's peerless blooms, 
Like virgins to their first Communion. 

I look at them and think of thee, 
Thy perfect form, thy sinless face ; 

How fair a flower thou art to me, 

How sacred in the sanctit}^ 

Of youthful beauty, pureness, grace ! 



ASUNDER. 69 

Above the flowers I see the stars, — 

Those golden ships in azure seas, 
With silent decks and shining spars, 
Anchored beyond ail earthly bars 

In the unknown eternities : 

Still farther are those stars away 
Than thou, my darling, art from me ; 

Yet, let mine eyes seek as they may, 

To thee they cannot find their way 
Across the cruel land and sea ! 

But when Sleep's dusky hands surprise 
Mine eyes, no more we'll parted be ; 

For Night, that jewelled bridge that lies 

Between the sunset and sunrise, 

In dreams I '11 cross and be with thee. 



WHEN. 



"\T THEN I am in mj' coffin laid, 
' ' O Love ! look not upon my face ; 

Let not so cold, so pale a thing 
Dreams of my living self replace. 

The hands of ice, the cheek of snow, 
O'er which thy breath unheeded plaj's, 

The idle pulse, the frozen veins. 
The eyes ungladdened by thy gaze ; 

The deafened ear, the lifeless lips, 
The brow of stone, the chilly hair, 

The heart unmoved at thy approach, — 
What semblance of thy darling there ? 

Kiss me good-by while yet the throb 
Of sweet existence is my own ; 

While yet I thrill beneath thy lip. 
Yet drink the richness of th}- tone ! 



WHEN. 71 

While yet mine eyes can see in thine 

No look of anguish to deplore, 
Kiss me goocl-by ; then go thy way, 

And look upon my face no more : 

Aye ! go thy way, oast not a glance 

Again upon my drooping head ; 
Remember me as living, warm, 

And fair, and fond, and true ; not — dead ! 



SONG. 



Tl /TY little one, my little one, 

The blossom is not faded yet 
You gave me once at set of sun, 

And whispered, " I will ne'er forget, — 
Will ne'er forget ! " 

Its petals still their hues retain ; 

I touch it, and it crumbles not ; 
I lay it on m}" heart again, — 

But, little one, thou hast forgot, — 

Thou hast foro;ot ! 



GUY'S GOLD. 



"V TOT from the Western gulches, 
•*- ^ Nor Indian isles of old ; 
Not from Peruvian gorges, 
Nor Russia's rigid hold, 
Was gathered the wonderful treasure, 
Was meted the bountiful measure, — 

Guy's Gold. 

No opulent Mexic valleys. 

No Asian hillsides bold. 
No Inca's brimming coffers, 

No miser hoards untold. 
Were ever so rich as to render 
This shimmering, scintillant splendor, - 

Guy's Gold. 

There, in the ancient doorwa3% 
Guy sits ; the sun goes west ; 

Suddenl}' o'er his shoulders, 
Suddenh' o'er his breast. 



74 GUY'S GOLD. 

Three happ}- 3'oung faces are beaming, 
Aud over his bosom goes streaming 

Guy's Gold. 



Coronet, braid, and ringlet, 
Missing their ribboned hold, 

Shining lilce summer moonlight, 
Untwist, uncurl, unfold. 

Pressed deep in the turbulent tresses, 

A hand fondly reverent blesses 

Guy's Gold. 



Down from each fair 3'Oung forehead 

A dainty flower has rolled : 
One is a red pomegranate, 

Blossom all fire and gold ; 
One fragrant white jasmine had printed, 
One deep-hearted lily had tinted, 

Guy's Gold. 



He lifts the falling flowers ; 

In them his fond eye traces 
A vague, sweet symbolism 

Of all the jo3'ous faces. 
While over his shoulder is swinging. 
And unto his bosom is chnging, 

Gu3''s Gold. 



GUY'S GOLD. 75 

Then laughter comes, and kisses, 

Guis' words in merry chase ; 
While sweet, unwritten music 

Leaps out on Guy's glad face, — 
Thanks God for the wealth he 's caressinaf, 
Thanks God for that infinite blessing, 

Guy's Gold. 

He close and closer clasps it, — 

Guinea, nor Ormus old. 
E'er in auriferous caverns 

Held wealth that he doth hold, — 
And, praying, he asks the All-Father 

To tenderly guard and to gather 

Guy's Gold ; 

Pra3's that by da}^ and night-time, 

Whate'er beguile or appall. 
His hand be laid in kindness 

And mercy-love on all. 
Until for Time's silver is bartered. 
Until for high Heaven is chartered, 

Guy's Gold. 



WHAT I SAW IN MY SLEEP. 



T SAW a radiant woman stand 
-^ Before me in m}' feverish dreams ; 
And her brow was white as a sea-sand drift 
On which the hghtning gleams. 



There was a glimpse of Heaven in her ej-e, 
A gleam of PI ell in her yellow hair ; 

She was one of those angel fiends, I knew, 
That women sometimes are. 



She spoke ; her voice like a censer swung 

Perfumes on the palpitating air ; 
She had fed it, I knew, on the daintiest sweets 

In the Hadien parterre. 

She had the tone of a dulcet bird. 

She deftly spoke with an adder's tongue ; 

And every enticing word she said, 
With serpent's poison stung. 



WHAT I SAW IN MY SLEEP. 77 

Her sea-green eyes were fair to behold, 

And her crimson mouth was pei'fect lipped ; 

But out of her glance and out of her heart 
Invisible venom dripped. 

I saw her la}' her little white hand 

On trusting hearts of unsinning men ; 
And, after the thrill of that Circean touch, 

The}- ne'er were pure again ! 

I thought the flush on her burning cheeks 
Was bloom from happier worlds than this, 

Till I dreamed in my dreams each round, red spot 
Was Satan's passionate kiss. 

Then I knew she was some Plutonian spy, 

Sent from the sulphurous nether earth 
To wake the tenderest passions of men, 

And poison them at birth. 

So I hid myself from the woman's eyes, 
And muttered a hurried Christian praj-er ; 

She vanished ; but sometimes I see her yet, 
Miraculously fair ! 



IN DUBIO. 



T SAT in the shade by a running river, 

■^ And read a runic rh3'me ; 

While arrows of light, from the sun's full quiver, 

Struck here and there with a scintillant shiver, 

Like shafts of flame 

Sent, wide of their aim. 
At tlie running tararet Time. 



Awa}" to the world went the river singing 

Its own mj'sterious la}". 
A robin was earthward his music flinging. 
His way o'er the meadows a plover was winging. 
Ah ! life was sweet. 
And m}' pulses beat 
Time to 3'outh's turbulent May. 

Around and around on ni}' finger, thinking, 

I turned a golden ring ; 
From springs of the i)rcscnt my life was drinking, 



IN DUBIO. 79 

From wells of the future my lips were shrinking ; 
Turning astray 
From its noblest wa}', 
The heart is an aching thing ! 

" Thou 'It sit," said the Ring, " in earth's proudest places, 

And Pride is Love in disguise ; 
Regret and Remorse will hide their dark faces 
Forever, from paths which glad Opulence paces." 
O Sophistr}', 
With th}' mockery 
Stoning Truth to death with lies ! 

Still, hesitant, I of myself alone 

Dreamed midst God's vast creation, 
And muttered, " I sin not ; gold shall atone 
For life degraded, for love never known." 
The idle lives 
Of rich men's wives, — 
Were the}^ my base temptation ? 

The voice of mj- soul whispered, " Cease th}- dreaming ; 

Scorn what the tempter saith, 
Else narrow thy life to a piteous seeming, 
Engirdle thy days with a shameful scheming : 
A solemn thing 
Is a plain gold ring. 
And all it encompasseth." 



80 IN DUBIO. 

Then seemed my heart-beats a multitude hasting 

My future to crucif)^ ; 
The apples of Sodom my young hps were tasting, 
Yet kissed they the ashes on which they were wasting ; 
For the mean sake 
Of a glittering stake, 
Mortgaging life to a lie ! 



" Can woman accept, with its laws unbending, 

The narrow realm of the Ring ; 

Be true to a falsehood that knows no ending, 

Be false to a truth that her heart is rending, 

Yet hold her soul 

In such firm control. 

It never shall faint 'neath the stinsr?" 



I heard the voice while the river went sliding 

Its devious track along ; 
With rugged places its beauty dividing, 
Feeling its wa}^ where the cowslips were hiding, 
For better, for worse, 
True unto its course, 
Contentedlv still and strong. 



I saw on a rock, where the sunlight' slanted, 

A serpent's fascinant coil ; 
Its terrible beaut}' a bird enchanted, 



IN DUBIO. 81 

Till deep in its bosom a fang was planted, 
With its selfish lust 
Laying dead in the dust 
Its frail, bewildered spoil. 

And I saw the prey of a vulture bleaching 

' Its bones on a rock}' shelf. 
" Lo ! Nature," I said, " is with sj'mbols preaching ; 
The tone of her wisdom I hear in her teaching. 
Saying to me, 
' Undauntedl}' be 
A woman true to herself ! ' " 

Quick down in the deeps of the silent river 

I buried the ring of gold ; 
Down under the current I saw it quiver ; 
Its dazzling gleam with a drowning shiver 
Went out of my life, 
And left it all rife 
With a woman's truth unsold. 



I gaze at the river rapidl}^ running 

Above the silver mosses ; 
At the creeper, its scarlet tankards sunning, 
Yet the drowning dash of the ripples shunning ; 
At the graceful dip 
Of the lily's lip 
To the gleam the water crosses. 

4* F 



82 IN DUBIO. 

I watch, while the evening cloud-lands vary 

From gold to porphyry ; 
From out of the blue floats an amber wherry, 
An opal cloud o'er the sunset to ferry ; 
And a single star 
Has crossed the bar 
Of Day, to Night's open sea. 

Far o'er the hills is the sun descending, 

The river slides to the sea ; 
To a past unpoisoned is Memory bending. 
To a joyous future my steps are tending, — 
No golden bribe 
Doth circumscribe 
My soul's integrity. 



I 



CREED. 



BELIEVE if I should die, 
And 3'ou should kiss my eyelids when I lie 
Cold, dead, and dumb to all the world contains, 
The folded orbs would open at thy breath, 
And, from its exile in the isles of death, 

Life would come gladl}' back along my veins. 

I believe if I were dead. 
And you upon my lifeless heart should tread. 

Not knowing what the poor clod chanced to be, 
It would find sudden pulse beneath the touch 
Of him it ever loved in life so much, 

And throb again, warm, tender, true to thee. 

I believe if on my grave. 
Hidden in woody deeps or by the wave. 

Your eyes should drop some warm tears of regret, 
From every salt}' seed of your dear grief, 
Some fair, sweet blossom would leap into leaf. 

To prove death could not make my love forget. 



84 CREED. 

I believe if I should fade 
Into those m^-stic realms where light is made, 

And 3'ou should long once more my face to see, 
I would come forth upon the hills of night 
And gather stars, like fagots, till thy sight. 

Led b}' their beacon blaze, fell full on me ! 

I believe my faith in thee. 
Strong as m}^ life, so nobly placed to be, 

I would as soon expect to see the sun 
Fall like a dead king from his height sublime. 
His glory stricken from the throne of time, 

As thee unworth the worship thou hast won. 

I believe who hath not loved 
Hath half the sweetness of his life unproved ; 

Like one who, with the grape within his grasp, 
Drops it with all its crimson juice unpressed. 
And all its luscious sweetness left unguessed. 

Out from his careless and unheeding clasp. 

I believe love, pure and true, 
Is to the soul a sweet, immortal dew. 

That gems life's petals in its hours of dusk ; 
The waiting angels see and recognize 
The rich crown jewel. Love, of Paradise, 

When life falls from us like a withered husk. 



TO THE MEXICAN EXILES. 



I .^AR from these bland and balmy shores 

Your native peaks arise, 
Saluting with their pallid lips 

Your bright, exultant skies. 
There Popocatepetl puts 

Aside his crown of cloud, 
And wears the snow from which was wrought 

Iztaccihuatl's shroud. 

There, one hj one, the stars step forth 

At gray-ej'ed twilight's beck. 
And, helmeted in gold, stand guard 

Above Chapultepec. 
The evening gales are scented with 

The sighs of sleeping flowers, 
And, ghostlike, down the valley rise 

Old Guadalupe's towers. 

La tierra caliente stands 

In sandals wrought of bloom, — 

A red-lipped queen who, smiling, waves 
Her sceptre of perfume. 



86 TO THE MEXICAN EXILES. 

And from the palm and mango groves, 

The sweet Cenzonde's throat 
Pours out its melody to meet 

The wild Jilguero's note. 

There rise the shining palace walls, 

The convent's ancient dome ; 
The hills, the groves, the roofs, the shrines, 

Of sweet and sacred home ! 
What can our lakes, our streams, our plains, 

Fair though the}' be, bestow 
On hearts that mourn the mountain peaks. 

The vales of Mexico ? 

The billowy gulf that rolls between 

Brings on its scrolled waves 
No kisses from the lips ye love, 

No voices of 3'our braves ! 
Alas ! no balm have we to heal 

The anguish of regret ; 
And here no Lethe rolls to teach 

The exile to forget. 

But thought, the soul's fair carrier-dove, 

With free and undipped wing, 
Sent from the drifting ai'k of life. 

Back o'er the seas will bring 
Some treasure of the olden time. 

Some flower that won your praise 
Green memories of the land ye love, 

And dreams of happier days. 



YOUR LETTER. 



T KISSED your letter when it came, 

I clasped it in ray throbbing palms ; 
Tumultuous joj^-storms swept my heart 
From out its olden summer calms. 

The lily nodded to the rose, 

The rose in richer hues seemed clad ; 

The skies put on a tenderer blue, — 
All things seemed glad that I was glad. 

I broke in haste the shining seal. 

With quaint devices deftly wrought, — 

The waxen lock that kept for me 

Words woven in the loom of thought. 

" That royal loom ! " I, smiling, said ; 

" Whence comes this texture, warp, and woof. 
Each glowing, scintillating thread. 

Of Love's Golcondian wealth a proof? " 



88 yOUR LETTER. 

I read ; the glittering words were there, — 
Pearls, rubies, emeralds of thought, 

Bright sapphire links, and diamond drops, — 
But where, oh ! where the love I sought? 

Was this the letter I had prized, 
And blessed for falling to my lot? 

True, much I found, but more I missed ; 
For what was all where love was not ? 



AT THE CHANDELEUR ISLANDS. 



O GALLOP, and conch, and salt sea sand, 
*^^ A blue and boundless sky ; 
White on his arm a little shy hand, 
Holding his destin3^ 



The cool wax- myrtle's mellow green, 

Brightening the marshy isles. 
Sweet whispers softl}^ uttered between 

A maiden's merry smiles. 

An earnest man, a laughing girl, 

A stretch of sea-girt beach ; 
A fluttering ribbon, a wind-tossed curl, 

A moment's trembling speech. 

A fair face toward the far lagoon, 

A rose-red girlish mouth ; 
The lighthouse tower in the blaze of noon. 

The warm wind from the south. 



90 AT THE CHANDELEUR ISLANDS. 

The rise and clip of dancing prows, 
A murmured "We must part ; " 

The pencilled curve of two arching brows, 
A strong man's broken heart. 



Scallop, and conch, and salt sea sand, 

A drift of cloudy skj^ 
The sob of waves on the shining strand. 

Ocean's immensity ! 

A heron white on the lone lagoon. 

Foam on the billow's crest ; 
The hghthouse tower pale under the moon, 

The wild wind from the west. 

The black sea-chestnut billow-strewn 

Along the lonely strand ; 
A stony heart, whose tares were sown 

By some one's false white hand. 

The lightman's lamp, a spark of gloom 

Amidst the gloom}^ dark ; 
A soul that drifts to its desolate doom, 

A wrecked, dismantled bark. 



Scallop, and conch, and salt sea sand, 

A drift of cloudy sky. 
The sob of waves on the shining strand. 

Ocean's immensitv ! 



HE AND SHE. 



OriE said, " Take thou this rose, and let it be 
*^ For just one night a memor}- of me ; 

" From out its petals if a dew-drop fall. 
Some tear I 've shed with thee let it recall. 

" Read in its hues, caught from the perfect weather, 
Some perfect jo}' we two have shared together. 

" If ft-bm its depths rich odors sudden start. 
Let them remind thee of a woman's heart, 

"Which learned, in opening its depths to thee, 
That love is life's most near necessit}'." 

He said, " The rose thou offerest me I take, 
To cherish ever for the giver's sake ! 

" To me a simple flower it cannot seem. 
Nor vagrant blossom of a summer dream ; 



92^ HE AND SHE. 

" For all its precious petals make the sum 
Of da3's bygone, of golden daj-s to come. 

♦' When its sweet beauty wins my tender praise, 
Thy sweeter beautj' will come back always. 

" Forever and forever it shall sleep, 
Where I my purest, holiest treasures keep." 

The}' parted then. She went and stood next day 
Just where she gave her little rose awa}'. 

Her soul was filled with man}' a tender thought, 
His sweet acceptance of the flower had brought. 

She glanced about the half-disordered room, 
Toward its planes of light, its nooks of gloom ; 

Then at some trifles idl}' thrown away. 

Like to3's thrown down bj' children tired of play ; 

A crumpled thing, its stainless beauty fled, 
There, in their midst, her little rose lay dead ! 



DAME AILSIE. 



" \ PENNY for your thought," I smiling said, 

And touched with reverent hand Dame Ailsie's 
head. 
Pale, proud Dame Ailsie, with the snow-white hair, 
And face whose beaut}' still shines through its care. 
New sorrows scarce can ever touch her more ; 
The barks that held her treasures by the shore 
Have all put out, and left her on life's sands, 
A lonely mourner wringing empt}^ hands. 

Her neighborship to me is very dear ; 
And often, on the winding stair of stone 
That from the wide banquette leads to my door, 
Of, but not in, the city's restless roar. 
We meet, and hold our woman chats alone. 
Or, as the balmy southern eve draws near, 
On the quaint balcony, that hangs below 
My dormer windows and the ancient eaves 
Where little waifs of weeds and grasses gi^ow. 
And where his mossy monogram Time weaves 



94 DAME AILSIE. 

About the old brick chimneys, as to stay 

The gnawing tooth of pitiless decay, 

We draw our bamboo chairs, and, side by side, 

Note the air-beating bat with sudden flight 

From his day dungeon swiftly hastening 

To quilt the widths of space with nervous wing ; 

Or watch the graj' ship Dusk serenely glide 

Across the fading sunset's outer bars 

Into the blue and broadening gulf of night, 

To drop her anchors in a sea of stars. 

The rushing wheels of time with talk we clog. 

As up behind the gray old synagogue 

Which rears its Moorish towers just o'er the way, 

The moon from far beyond the river rises. 

And with strange splendor all the town surprises ; 

Across the uneven roofs, that intervene 

'Twixt us and distant features of the scene. 

We watch it with a wand of silent fire 

Smite into radiance 3'on tapering spire. 

While still beyond its opulent rays endower 

The matchless grandeur of St. Patrick's tower. 

Our e^^es are earnest lovers of the skies. 

Their clouds, their stars, their sunset and sunrise, 

Their constant march of change, their light, their shade, 

Their dusk of storms, their sunbursts ; their dismaj'ed 

Blue acres of the air-farms, overflowed 

With silent cataracts of rended cloud ; 



DAME AILSIE. 95 

Their caverns where the thunder-steeds they keep, 

And lightning whips to lash them if they sleep ; 

The mystic gardens of the solemn night, 

Sown dark miles deep with shining seeds of light ; 

The constellations, as the}^ sink and rise, — 

Those untranslated gospels of the skies ; 

The constant dying and the constant birth 

Of variable things above the earth, — 

All these our eyes delighted watch ; and oft 

As we together turn our eyes aloft. 

Searching the fathomless wonders of the dark 

That enter into Night's stupendous ark. 

All pettj^, worldly cares sink out of sight, 

And leave us lonely with the Infinite. 

Thus had we sat now for uncounted time. 
Watching the skj'-scape, mooned, starred, and sublime, 
"Which stretched bej^ond the city roofs away. 
Pierced bj' its towers, and spires, and gables gray, 
When from Dame Ailsie's lip a sigh I caught. 
And softl}- said, " A penny for your thought." 
Upon her gentle hand she leaned her head. 
Looked far away, then answered me and said : 

" I call to mind to-night a girl who died, — 
Ah me ! what weary, wear}^ years ago. 
How I did pity her, and how I cried 
Above her placid and encoffined brow ! 
I laid my fingers on the chilled, fair hair. 
Which round her laughing face had loved to curl, 



96 DAME AILSIE. 

And, weeping, wailing, and rebelling there 

Above the shrouded bosom of the girl, 

With aching heart, I cried aloud, ' Oh, why 

Should one so beautiful, so happ}-, die? 

Life is so rich, so bountiful a thing, 

So full of flowers to pluck, of songs to sing. 

Of joy and health, of beaut}' and of youth. 

Of promise and fulfilment, love and truth, — 

Why was she robbed of all? Oh, why not spared 

For yet a little while ? ' 

" Even as I dared 
To murmur thus, her gravestone rose between 
My anguished face, her coffined form serene, 
Bearing the sculpture ' died at seventeen ! ' 

" Oh, what a piteous thing it seemed to me. 
Her death and burial with life's spring so green ! 
How cruel the relentless, stern decree 
Summed in those few words, ' Died at seventeen ! ' 

" I too was 3'oung. With white, unwounded feet 
I stood in life's fresh lanes, and saw the sweet, 
Enticing radiance b}' the future thrown 
About the hill- tops of the Yet Unknown. 
My hands were full of 3'outh's unfaded flowers. 
My lips were touching its untasted hours ; 
Toward happy fields of rose and mignonette 
M3- bounding heart and hopeful eyes were set ; 
Therefore I cried aloud, with faltering tongue, 
' God ! how sad a thing to die so 3'oung ! ' 



DAME AILSIE. 97 

" Ah, that was long 3'ears since. Sunshine and snow 

Have fallen and faded many a time, I know, 

Where once I wept above that slender grave, 

And pitied her who unto dust we gave. 

But now, to-night, with something that 's akin 

To env}', comes ni}- heart's lone doors within 

The memory of that slim, green grave afar, 

Gemmed by the daisies, greened with gentle rain, 

Free from life's fire, or fret, or passion's pain ; 

And, as dumb Thought, a lonely pilgrim, goes 

O'er blighted fields of mignonette and rose. 

Afar, far off that dead girl's face appears : 

I see it without sorrow, without tears, 

And sigh, while gazing on the scarred Between, 

' God ! that I had died at seventeen ! ' " 



BY THE BIRD-CAGE. 



SEEDS for thy banquet, my warbler, 
Flowers for thy palace of song — 
Hush now ; my senses are weary, 

Thou hast sung loudly and long ! 
Into my presence a vision 

Came with thy last thrilling note, 
Which, like a cadence etysian, 

Soared from th}' marvellous throat. 



Oh ! what I heard as it floated, 

Filtering its sweetness through sweets. 
Born of the blooms of the orange 

Fringing these narrow old streets. 
Oh ! what I felt as its sifted 

Tenderness fell through the flowers, — 
How my soul drifted and drifted 

Back through life's beautiful hours ! 



BY THE BIRD-CAGE. 99 

Only the notes of a bird-song, 

Only a blossom sweet-scented ; 
Only a touch unforgotten, 

Only a moment repented ; 
Only a shallop that grounded, 

Where the deceiving sands lay 
Hidden, and still, and unsounded, 

Out in life's beautiful bay ! 



From its wreck, lone and deserted. 

Just now a weird Presence stole, 
And with its fragile hand sounded 

All the sad bells of my soul. 
I, midst their chiming and flowing. 

Found the lost kej- to my fate : 
Oh ! anguish, shaped out of knowing. 

When knowledge cometh too late ! 



Led by those little white fingers. 

Backward I 'm borne to that shore 
Where the dark waters are breaking 

Of the wild sea Nevermore. 
'Gainst my sad heart the}' are beating. 

With their spra}' are mine e3'es wet - 
Hear them repeating, repeating, 

All that I never forget ! 



100 BY THE BIRD-CAGE. 

Once more I 'm dreamily bending 

Over some intricate page ; 
Sweetlj' a young voice is mingled 

With thine, O bird in the cage ! 
I see the mystical pages 

Swept by a maiden's bright curl ; 
I read the lore of the sages, 

Read not the heart of a girl ! 



Curtains of white lace are swa^'ing, 

Wanders the wind up and down ; 
She b}' a window is sewing, 

In the old French part of town ; 
Beams of the sunlight are golden, 

Pomegranate blossoms burn red ; 
Dusky braids, many times folden. 

Crowning the young Creole head. 



Up from the gardens below us 

Odors of orange-buds creep ; 
Softly the winds from the river 

Over the balconv sweep ; 
Pigeons are dreamilj' cooing 

On the tiled roof o'er the waj' ; 
Pauses the little hand, sewing, 

Over the volume to stray, 



BY THE BIRD-CAGE. 101 

Whence I read — prone there before her, 

Under the shade of the vine — 
Of love, and all the sweet loving 

I deem can never be mine. 
" Kiss me ! " I cr}^ " what is surer 

Than fate which biddeth me fly ? 
Kiss me ! oh, what can be purer 

Than kisses kissing good-by ? " 



Oh ! little hand in ray own hand, 

Drooping and beautiful head, 
Eyes lifted sad and beseeching. 

Words left forever unsaid ! 
Vanish, O vision too tender ! 

What was not was not to be ; 
Yet with what ravishing splendor 

Comes back that moment to me ! 



Moment when all my rich reading 

Read not those marvellous eyes ; 
Moment when blindfolded wisdom 

Left untranslated those sighs ; 
Moment when out of my keeping 

Fell the one jewel divine. 
Out of my idle reach sweeping 

Ere my heart told me 't was mine. 



102 BY THE BIRD-CAGE. 

Dew of a kiss ever cherished, 

Spell of a name never breathed ; 
Voice that the scabbard of silence 

Now and forever hath sheathed ! 
Forth has my saddened thought hurried ■ 

Yonder, where cloisters are gray ; 
Dusky-haired was the young novice 

Aged nuns buried to-da}'. 



OLGA. 



IJL ANTED stem-deep in her red-gold hair, 
A rose trails over her shoulder white, 
As, softly robed and in gems bedight, 
She sits the fairest where all are fair, 
With wondrous e3'es that seem everywhere 
Save turned to the stage and the players there. 

Those eyes, to me, are the strangest things ! 
Night-blue ; no, amber ; no, thej'' are green 
As cool sea-deeps in a sunflash seen. 

And what a subtile, sweet perfume clings 

To her garments when she stirs, and flings 

About her invisible curtainings ! 

There, in the box with the gilded door — 
The first proscenium-box at the right — 
The prettiest woman by far in sight ! 
Her great, calm ej'es roam the boxes o'er, 
Roam, and return, and wander once more, 
While forty musicians are playing " the score." 



104 OLGA. 

One arm on the velvet rail she leans, 

And that slow smile to her lip which comes 
Could make a halo for martyrdoms. 

"Who can say what its m3'stery means ? 

Ah, well, at the play there are scenes and scenes, 

And a curtain which nothing tangible screens ! 



Her perfect face not a face salutes 

Of all the multitude turned unto her ; 
And men admire, and women demur, 
And this the homage of that refutes. 
While grumble the drums and whistle the flutes 
In the " Hunters' Chorus" of Der Freyschiltz. 



Over her shoulder the red rose trails. 
Rises and falls in the opaline light 
Of lamps that seem only burnt to-night 
For that red rose and the perfume veils. 
And the cheek that neither reddens nor pales 
Though a thousand eyes its beauty assails. 



There 's that about her to make one weep, 
All perfect and peerless though she seems, 
As some one seen in those sweet, strange dreams 
That come to a shining summer night's deep, 
Unbroken, and yet half-conscious sleep. 
When through other planets we seem to sweep. 



OLGA. 105 

The players play, and the great house cheers ; 
That rose, it is red on its altar white, 
Like blood on the wing of an angel bright. 

And why does 't seem, as the dimness clears. 

That the necklace of pearls her young throat wears 

Is only a necklace of frozen tears ? 



5* 



OLD AGE TO TIME. 



T TO ! "Warder, who sitteth at life's gi-eat gates, 
-^ And opeth the doors of death, 
Here 's a health to thee in an empt}^ heart, 
With a mortal's failins; breath ! 



I have marched the march, and the day is done. 

Life's rusty weapons I stack ; 
And close to the embers I lay me down 

Of life's last bivouac. 



Naj", guardian gray, with skeleton hands, 

In vain wilt thou search my years ; 
Of all the}' were worth thou hast robbed them once. 

Ambition, love, hope, and tears ! 

One after one have I given to thee 
Each trinket, treasure, and dower, — 

The flame of desire, the satiate sigh. 
The bud and the faded flower ; 



OLD AGE TO TIME. 107 

With the crimson lip and the brow divine 

Of Beaut}' in beauty's prime, 
And the laugh that leaped from a careless heart, 

The faith that made love sublime. 

All passion-wreathed into th}^ hands was thrown 

The golden bowl of my youth ; 
And thy cynic lip sipped and soured the wine 

In the sacred vase of Truth. 

In the vanished valleys what now remains? 

The vintage is plucked and pressed, 
The songs are hushed, and the singers are dead, 

The vintagers all at rest. 

Thy sickle hath scarred all my noblest years, 

The root of mj' days is cleft. 
Ho ! thou who holdeth so much of my life, 

I pledge thee in what is left ! 

To thee, who sitteth at life's great gates 

And opeth the doors of death, 
Here 's to thee, to thee, in an empty heart, 

With a mortal's failing breath ! 



RIME. 



A FTER the last night's frost 

The autumn leaves are crisper ; 
And from the frigid north 

There comes a wintry whisper. 
Ovpr the icy earth 

Is spread a glittering splendor ; 
But from its frozen heart 

No sweet thing comes, nor tender. 

After the chilling frost 

Of our last cruel parting, 
Out of my frozen heart 

No tender thought is starting. 
Into my icy life 

Dead leaves fall crisp and crisper ; 
And from mj^ future comes 

A lone and wintry whisper. 



THE EQUINOX. 



\ CROSS the sky, by unseen pilots steered, 

The white ships speed whose sails are spun of air ; 
Across the laud, with w'histle w-ild and weird, 
The gypsy wind is wandering everj'where. 

From out the sable scabbard of the clouds 

The lightning leaps, and stabs the horrent sky ; 

While crashing storm-guns thunder from the shrouds 
Of mist}' fleets, which, battling, float on high. 

King Ocean sends a million white-plumed knights 

At midnight to assault the iron shore ; 
With pallid lips they hear the rocky heights 

Proclaim, " Thus far, but farther, nevermore ! " 

At every door a stranger I descry ; 

Wet, cold, and pale, imperiously' he knocks : 
He is a guest whom no one may den}-, 

Beneath whose tread our trembling planet rocks, — 

The Swart King Equinox. 



THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 



'nr^HE day was hot, and we sat in the tent, — 

Above us a live-oak's branches bent, 
And wild birds warbled their innocent loves 
In the odorous depths of orange-groves. 

No fold in the flag at the door was stirred ; 
It hung in the heat like some bright, dead bird. 
And the air was so still you could hear the tramp 
Of the pacing sentry all over the camp. 

It seems, sometimes, that I 3-et can hear 
The cardinal-bird whistle loud and clear, 
And the shrill, brief note of the nonpareil. 
From behind the gum-tree's moss^- veil, 

And the startling buzz of the dragon-flies, 
And the bold cicada's sudden cries, 
And the rush b}' some sinuous serpent made, 
'Neath the rank palmetto's jagged shade, 



THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. Ill 

While the palpitant lizard climbs the seams 
Of our shining tent in the hot sunbeams, 
And the jest and laugh go from mouth to mouth 
In our idle camp there away down South. 

'T was our Colonel's tent, and some of us boys 

Were plaj-ing that day at euchre ; 
With a deal of good-natured soldierly noise, 

Winning or losing our lucre. 

The Colonel looked on ; he never played. 

But sometimes beguiled an hour 
By watching the cut of heart or spade, 

Or sudden turn of a " bower." 

About this man a mystery hung ; 

His historj^'s hidden links 
Were as hard to read as riddles that sprung 

Of old from the Theban sphinx. 

Reserved and cold he was called by some, 

Though ever the warm abettor 
Of right ; but he ne'er named friends or home, 

And never received a letter. 

At the first call of our startled land 

He joined us Illinois Yanks, 
And rose to his present high command 

Out of the heart of the ranks. 



112 THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 

A braver rider ne'er held a rein, 
A bolder ne'er wore a spur ; 

Yet, for a comrade wrung with pain. 
No touch could be tenderer. 

His hand was soft as a gentle girl's. 
His smile had a rare, sweet grace. 

And a shining mass of soft black curls 
Framed in his pale dark face. 

And straight he was as an Indian's arrow, 
And lithe as an Indian's bow ; 

And not a thought of his soul was narrow 
For either a friend or a foe. 

E'er first and foremost in the fight 

His tall form rose afar, 
Like one transfigured b}' the might 

And majesty of war ! 

His brave, black eyes like scimitars 
I 've seen flash out in battle, 

And blaze like God-ignited stars, 
Amid the roar and rattle 

Of falling shot and bursting shell. 

The war-cloud's leaden rain, 
And all the mimicr}" of hell 
That paints the battle-plain. 



THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 113 

But, though he farthest rode of all, 

And dared what few would dare, 
He passed unscathed by blade, or ball, 

Or shot, or shell, or snare, 

As though he bore a charmed life. 

This man who claimed no tie, 
No friend, no sweetheart, child or wife, 

To mourn him should he die. 

Well-educated, brave, well-bred. 
Handsome, high-toned, and 3'oung, 

Speaking four languages, 'twas said. 
Besides his mother-tongue, — 

This our Colonel, Gustave Dupre, 

So nonchalantl}' bent 
Above our game of cards that day. 

Within his scntried tent ; 

When on the sod we heard a foot 

Crush down the verdure vernal, — 
A corporal with brief salute 

Said, " Some one to see you, Colonel." 

We all looked up, paused in our game ; 
There in the tent door's peaked frame 
A dusk}' w^oman, straight and tall. 
Stood smiling down upon us all. 



114 THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 

She was a stranger ; whence she came 
None of us knew, none knew her name ; 
But age and weakness, sex and port. 
Appealed to every soldier's heart. 

" Come in, auntie," our Colonel said, 
" The sun beats hot upon your head. 
Here is a seat. — No, bo^'s ; don't go, — 
Be sure her mission all may know." 

"We bo3"s sat where our game had stopped, 
Our cards upon the table dropped ; 
Indifferent, careless, indolent, 
"VYe watched the stranger in the tent. 

Erect, and with attentive glance, 
Half question and half nonchalance, 
With folded arms across his breast. 
The Colonel stood beside his guest. 

She took the seat, and straightened down 
The folds in her blue cotton gown. 
And rearranged, with wrinkled hands, 
Her gingham turban's brilliant bands ; 

Then felt the pins, with nervous quest, 
That held the kerchief across her breast, 
And drew her tired feet, soiled and bare. 
From sight beneath the low camp-chair. 



THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 115 

Her faded face was swai-t, not black, 
And marred hy many a trouble-track. 
For Care, the toiler, o'er her brow 
Had driven a sharp, incisive plough, 
Whose cruel furrows, deep and murk, 
Told he 'd not idled at his work. 

Within her cheeks twin hollows la}' 
Wrecks of a beauty passed away. 
The ruined dimple, the stranded blush, 
Wont in its savage j-outh to rush 
From cheek to brow, unchecked, untamed, 
Unclouded, joyous, and unshamed, 
Now lay there dead, forgot, unnamed ; 
Whilst ashen tints of grief and gloom. 
With which Time paints out all the bloom. 
All brightness, freshness, youth, and grace. 
At last from every woman's face. 
Lay, sombring aught that had been fair 

Of rounded grace or color there. 

Yet in her dark and liquid eye 

Shone out that solemn depth of power 

To suffer dumbly, patiently. 

Which is a woman's special dower. 

This majesty of self subdued. 

The lowly creature's brow imbued 

With something of a Christian grace 

That had become a lovelier face. 

She spoke, with glance and mien abject. 

And in the common dialect 



116 THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 

That marked the plain plantation " hands,' 
Well known in cane and cotton lands. 
Rude were her words, but sweet her tone, 
As an}' high-born dame would own. 
And oft some quaint old Creole phrase, 
Or gentle speech of gentler days, 
The curious listener could detect 
Mixed with her negro dialect. 



" Scuse me. Gunnel, I troubles 3'ou, shore, 
But, dear young massa, Ise ole and pore, 
An' de quiver of life, once full of years, 
Holds nuffin now but a few salt tears ; 
A little more toil up life's rough road, 
Den dese ole shoulders '11 drop dere load. 



" Ise come, as it 's been my habit to come 
Wherever Ise heerd a Yankee drum. 
To ax if to your knowledge dere 's been, 
Froo out de ranks of de Lincum men, 
A bo}' of mine. He went to de Norf 
When m}^ ole massa, bress us, was worf 
Sich heaps of Ian' an' cane an' mone}', 
As neber, I specs, yon dreamed of, honej-. 
Dis boy of mine, he was strong an' peart. 
An 't 'peared to me he could n't be sceart 
By eber a look, or a word, or a sound : 
Not even de hay of de fierce bloodhound. 



THE CAPTAIN'S STOIiY. 117 

Mars' Gunnel, I nusscd clat boj- of mine 

Froo de moonlight niglits an' de hot sunshine, 

An' my heart was neber dat weighted down 

It could n't take him dar all m}' own, 

An' feel dar was food an' light an' rest 

In holdin' dat little one close to my breast." 

She paused, and wiped with homely grace 
The hot tears from her troubled face. 

Said the Colonel, " When did he go away?" 

She answered, *•' I can't now 'zactly say, — 

Dat is, jes de year, mo pas connais ; 

But, near as I now kin recolleck. 

He 'd jes about turned seven, I 'speck. 

I could n't read, an' he could n't write, 

An' Ise laid awake a many a night 

A prayin' an' prajin' unto de Lord 

Dat chile of mine would on'y sen' word 

Where he was gone to, or where he was gwine ; 

But, bress 3-ou, dar neber cum word nor line ; 

An' eber sence dis yere war broke out, 

It 's seemed to me, if I tried, I mought 

Diskiver a clue to dat chile of mine 

From some one 'noder from 'cross de line. 

Kase, brave as he was, when de war begun 

'T was in him to jine it de fustest one. 

So Ise sarchcd an' sarched under ebery rag 

Dat Ise seen afloat of de Lincum flag, 



118 THE CAPTAIN'S STORY, 

A hopin' an' liopin' dese pore ole ej-es 
Mought see him jes once afore dey dies, 
Dat dese ole arms mought hold him yet, 
Afore de comin' of life's sunset. 
An' my heart keeps longin' to find his lub. 
Just as de wild beast longs for her cub." 

"Why did he leave you?" the Colonel said, 
" Sold, lost, or run awaj- instead?" 

The old mulattress dropped her face, 

With the humble air of her humbled race. 

"Sold? no! lost? no, nor run'd away, — 

'Deed, sah ! he neber dun went astray 

Out of his own free will an' accord. 

Nor evil-mindedness, bress de Lord ! 

No, no, Mars' Gunnel, my boy was good, 

I wants dat ar well understood ; 

His heart was noble, — he loved me true, 

An' many 's de time, 'twixt me an' you, 

I knows he 's longed for dese lovin' arms 

Dat sheltered him once from dis world's harms ; 

But, 3'ou see. Mars' Gunnel, 't was n't all right, 

My boy was handsome, an' smart, an' — white ! 

" Massa was rich, dere was pride in my heart, — 
I begged my boy mought be given a start. 
An' not be hand an' foot tied down, 
A white-skinned slave to a white man's frown. 



THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 119 

I was younger den, an' purt^-, de}' say ; 
Well, anyhow, I had m}' own way, 
An' de boy was sent from de ole plantation 
Somewhere up Norf for an edication, 

" For da3-s arter dat I moped roun' de place, 
An' cried if a chile looked up in ni}' face ; 
An' I sot on de banks of de old bayou, 
A mournin' an' mournin' de long nights froo ; 
For I could n't somehow set my heart to rights, 
An' it an' me had some awful fights. 

" I couldn't help wishin' my 3'oung one back, 

For a mother 's a mother, sah, white or black ; 

l>ut I had my work, an' a bus}' hand 

'Twixt a troubled heart an' its grief will stand ; 

An' I learned to say, ' It 's all for de best ; 

He '11 come back some cla^-, de Lord be bressed.' 

" But year arter j'ear came de cotton an' de cane, 

But dat boy of mine cum'd neber again ! 

Den ole massa died, an' I was alone, 

An' into de hands of strangers thrown, 

An', somehow, I lost, when dey laid massa low, 

Ebery trace of dat chile I longed for so ! 

" Den at las' cum de signs of dis 3'ere war, 
An' 3-ou Liiicum soldiers here, where j-ou are ; 
An' I was sot free, an' I made up my mind 
Dat, livin' or dyin', my boy I 'd find ; 



120 THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 

An' I 'spect Ise clone walked a Imnnerd mile, 
Barefooted, a tryin' to line dat chile ! 
Now, Gunnel, dat's wli}' 1 ask your consent 
To jes look along froo 3-our regiment. 
An' see if 'mongst j'our men I can't fine 
Dat growed-up pickaninny of mine." 

The Colonel had heard her rambling talk, 

Leaving his place now and then to walk, 

As was his wont, up and down the tent, 

With folded arms and brow down-bent. 

Now, as she paused to dr^^ a tear, 

" Good woman," he said, " no such man here, 

If I know aught of my regiment ; 

But look for yourself, you have my consent." 

" I wants to look for myself," she said ; 
" I neber shall believe dat bo}* is dead 
Till my pore bod}' has toted my soul 
Out of de reach of dis world's control." 

" Na}', nay ! with you let us hope not dead," 
With kindly gesture, the Colonel said ; 
" But think for a moment what time has done 
In the changing years to change 3-our son. 
Just think what a man he now must be. 
How stalwart and bearded ; it seems to me 
The changes that surely have taken place 
Would leave him a stranger before your face." 



THE CAPTAIN'S STOllY. 121 

" Not know my chile ! " the negress said, 

For the first time lifting her lowly head ; 

" Not know m}" boy, wheresomeber he be, 

If good or wicked, or bond or free ? 

Not know dat boy, de son dat I bore? 

Oh, Mars' Gunnel, you 's jestin' shore ! 

"Wh}', de stars will drop, an' de moon be spiled, 

When a mother 's done forgot her child ! 

If my boy 's livin' he 's twenty-nine, 

An' straight as de Lou'siana pine ; 

An' he ain't got much of my cussed race 

Writ out, thank God ! on his brave 3'oung face. 

Then he has marks ! " she said, looking up : 

" His ear was bit by a terrier pup, 

An' de leastest piece of it tore awa}'. 

An' I knows he carries dat mark to-day ! 

Den a sailor man, from some furrin land. 

Pricked on the back of my boy's right hand. 

In right smart style, two letters blue, 

And said dey 'd alius be good as new. 

De letters stood for his name, you see, 

An' he told me to 'member 'em, G and D." 



Sudden]}- pale our Colonel stood, 
As if some horror had bleached his blood. 
Whilst ever}' one of us seemed to feel 
His own breast pierced with red-hot steel ; 
For there, on our Colonel's slim right hand. 
Bright and clear was the livid brand, — 
6 



122 THE CAPTAIN'S STOllY. 

Bright and clear for us all to see, 
The fatal characters, G and D ! 

Then came the dawn of a wild surprise 
Into the woman's dilated eyes. 
A swift change over her features swept, 
A sudden flush to her forehead leapt, — 
And then, great God ! shall I e'er forget? 
One hand on the Colonel's epaulette. 
Whilst with the other the clustering hair 
She quickly pushed from the small left ear, 
And there in the delicate flesh was seen 
The mark where the terrier's teeth had been. 

Burst from her lips one appalling shriek ! 
She glared at the Colonel, but did not speak. 
Just like a tigress we 'd seen her spring 
Up at his breast ; now, a drooping thing, 
Haggard and helpless, we saw her cling 
To the shuddering form she seemed to sting, 
By the slight touch of her dark hand there, 
Into a figure of mute despair. 

Like some one suddenly stricken dumb. 

With heart and veins and pulses numb, 

All life, all sense a frozen flood, 

For one brief space our Colonel stood ; 

But now the strength came back to his grasp ; 

He caught her throat in a cruel clasp ; 



THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 123 

The tender pit}^ that lately- shed 

Its gentle light on his lace had fled, 

And a stern white horror lay there instead. 

" Unhand me, woman ! " he cried, in tones 

Less like words than torturing groans ; 

'' You lie ! oh, fiend ! this is false as hell ! 

Take back the lie 3'ou have dared to tell 

In this damned part jou have plajed so well ; 

Take it back, — 1 '11 throttle you else, — I say ! " 

She only answered, " Gustave Dupre ! " 

From side to side I saw him swerve, 
As if each syllable struck a nerve. 
Down from her throat his white hand sunk ; 
He reeled like one death-struck or drunk. 
Upon his forehead's pallid hue 
Drops of agony stood like dew. 
AVith sudden frenzy and reckless touch 
He toi'e himself from the woman's clutch, 
And then again, with stern command, 
He hoarsely bade her beside him stand. 
" You gentlemen," he said, " have heard 
This woman's words, nor stood aloof 
Whilst she arrayed each damning proof 
Of her strange claim. My soul is stirred 
To madness. What have 3'e believed? 
I burn to know myself deceived, — 
To wake, shake off this fearful dream. 
This horrid plot, this hellish scheme. 



124 THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 

I cannot judge, — I cannot think, — 
I totter on the awful Ijrink 
Of horrors that accumulate 
Around this dark, undreamed-of fate. 
Judge ye for me ; though I do swear, 
For 3'onder woman standing there 
No heart-throb, instinct, new-born ties 
Of kindred feeling, in me rise 
Responsive to this loathsome claim 
That fain would link me to her shame ! 
Look at us both, — here as we stand ; 
Forget this mark, this odious brand ! 
For God's sake, men, breathe out no lie, 
Withhold no truth, nor aught deny, — 
Say, if in cheek, or lip, or brow, 
Here as we stand before you now, 
A single trait alike you see 
Betwixt this woman here and me. 
Nay, shrink not, flinch not, nor delay ; 
I do command ! do you obey ! " 



What need to stammer out replies ? 
He read our answers in our e^'es. 
Unlike, yet like, there stood the two. 
Resemblance growing on our view. 
As, both disraa3-ed and both undone. 
They stood, life's golden glow all gone. 
Together, and yet so alone. 
The stricken mother and her son. 



THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 125 

He spoke : his voice fell cold and clear 

Upon each strained, attentive ear. 

" Soldiers, enough I In every face 

I read conviction of disgrace. 

Are 3'e my friends ? Then each must know 

The cruel blight of this foul blow. 

Are ye my foes ? Then each and all 

Have in the horror of my fall 

Their vengeance found, their triumph won, 

To see me here disgraced, undone, 

Polluted, shamed, a thing to shun, 

A negro mother's bastard son ! 



" Plere, with mj' hand upon ray sword, 

I give 3'ou my untarnished word, 

I knew naught of my birth or name 

That shadowed me with taint or shame. 

I swear this, and mj' word is white. 

Thank God ! however in j^our sight 

Polluted be the blood that chains 

My soul to these degraded veins. 

I had ambition, health, and youth, 

But no suspicion of the truth. 

The mj-stery that about me hung 

No one unravelled, and I clung 

To it in idle hours perchance. 

And dreamed some tender, bright romance 

In coming time might be unrolled, 

"With my name midst its honors scrolled. 



126 THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 

Therefore I vowed to make that name 
One that the noblest blood might claim 
To write upon the blazoned page 
Of an unsullied heritage. 
From some unknown, m^'sterious hand 
Gold flowed to aid each aim I planned ; 
How hard I toiled, and what I won, 
It boots not now to any one." 

Then spake the woman, o'er whose face 
Conflicting thoughts had seemed to chase, 
As oft, in summer, on the plain. 
Shadows chase shadows o'er the grain. 
Her eyes, from which the tears had gushed 
When first conviction o'er her rushed. 
Now glittered stead\^, bright, and drj^, 
Though wet was every soldier's eye. 
Upon her dusk}' cheeks a spot 
Of glowing red burned fierce and hot, 
While on her lips, firm, cold, compressed, 
A subtle meaning stood confessed. 

" Massa," she said, and every w^ord 

Burned to the brain of him who heard, — 

" Mars' Gunnel, Ise gwine to go away. 

I don't want 3'ou to rue de day 

When fust I cum j-er, a pore ole tramp, 

Disturbin' de peace of dis 3-er camp. 

Somehow or 'noder Ise made a mistake ; 

Folks will sometimes when de heart 's fit to break. 



THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 127 

'Scuse me, — Ise giv' you a heap of bother ; 
Ole people 's stupid somehow or 'nother. 
But, Mars' Gunnel, and ebery one, 
Better folks dan me dis war 's undone, 
An' whar I cum from dey tink it 's dazed 
My pore ole brain, and de}- saj' Ise crazed. 



" Ise gwine away right now, — Ise tired, — 

It is n't much to which Ise 'spired ; 

I jes thought if I could fine my boy 

Den life would shet wid a sudden joy. 

Ise pleased myself for many a year 

Tinkin' how, as a man, dat bo}' 'd appear ; 

An' many a pang has ni}^ heart forsook 

When I thought jes how de chile mus' look, — 

How tall he 'd growed, and how pleased he 'd bo 

When I foun' him out, an' he know'd 't was me ! 

But, Mars' Gunnel, it 's plain an' clear 

If I sarched foreber he 'd not be here ; 

I don't see any but what would be 

Ten tousand times too good for me, — 

So smart an' peart, brave an' upright, 

An' honored too, an' all so white ! 

Ise gwine on huntin' dat boy of mine, 

Froo de moonlight nights an' de hot sunshine, 

A rockin' m}' grief by de ole ba3ou, 

And nussin' de dream dat neber comes true, 

Dat yet I '11 fine him once agen 

In de God-blest ranks of de Lincum men. 



128 THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 

Whar cle graj' moss swings on de pecan-tree 
Dere 's a cabin yet, an' a place for me 
To rest in, when, a tired ole rover, 
I knows dat de hunt for dat chile is over. 
Jes for a minute, — ah, mon Dieu ! 
Cunnel — j^our face, — but 't was n't true ! 
No, — not wid de proud, an' great, an' brave 
Could rank de son of de pore ole slave. 

" Massa, Ise gwine, — Ise slow to go, — 
But den Ise ole an' tired, you know ; 
Don't mine dese tears dat m}' face has wet, 
A mother 's a mother, an' can't forget. 
Though her skin be brack as de day unborn, 
De bab}' dat once on her heart was worn. 
Cunnel, good-by. Oh, let my hps 
La}' jes once 'gin your finger-tips, 
Jes one kiss dar, — one, soft and sly, 
Unknownst to an}' one — good-by ! 
Ise gwine right now, — of course you see. 
Your hand — dose letters was nuffln to me. 
My boy's — name — was n't — Oh, my God ! 
Gasping, smiling, down to the sod. 
At the very feet of our Colonel bi-ave. 
Slowly sank down the poor old slave. 

Strong with a strength we had failed to know, 
Felled where none of us felt a blow. 
Great in that grand, unselfish pride 
Which heroes and martyrs hath glorified, 



THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 129 

Prone she sank at our Colonel's side : 

And, as she fell, her fading ej'cs 

Turned with one ^-earning, pleading gaze, 

Mingled 3'et with a glad surprise. 

Up to the Colonel's haggard face ; 

Then fell awa}- with that mute endeavor 

The dying make to give up forever 

All that the}' hold of dearest worth. 

Or sacred value upon the earth. 

And turned to us, as in the tent, 

Saddened and shocked, we o'er her bent, 

And, searching our faces one b}- one, 

Whispered, " Your Cunnel is not m}' son ! " 

With these brief words, all glorified 

Her features grew, — once, twice, she sighed, 

Lifted her hands, and spread them o'er 

Her dusk}' fiice, and spoke no more. 

" Send for the surgeon ! " the Colonel said ; 

On his own knee he pillowed her head. 

The surgeon came. On the swarth}' breast 
Slightly his practised hand he pressed ; 
Then, with a shake of his sturd}^ head, 
" Boys," he muttered, " this woman is dead ! 
Send for a stretcher, — how came she here ? 
Anj'thing now must serve for a bier. 
There 's news afloat : the enem^^ lie 
Strongly entrenched, it is said, hard bj' ; 
But of course you know it ; there 's work ahead : 
Better make haste and bury your dead." 
G* I 



130 THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 

Then with a laugh, and a soldier's jest, 
Unaware of what sore oppressed 
Every heart that around him beat, 
He turned away with hurrying feet ; 
Calling back, as he passed from sight, 
" Hot work for us all before midnight." 



Responsive to the careless word 

So lightly said, so keenlj^ heard, 

Swept through our veins that martial fire 

Which every soldier doth inspire. 

We half forgot what late had been 

In picturing the coming scene ; 

And each man's hand was on his sword. 

And each man's foot turned toward the door, 

When one imploring, earnest word 

Caused every one to halt once more. 

The Colonel stood beside the dead. 
His own cloak o'er the form was spread. 
And o'er his head seemed to have passed 
Years since we looked upon him last. 

" My men ! " he said, " this doomed hand 

Bears, in its blue and livid brand, 

The vile insignia of disgrace 

That marked my mother's lowl}" race. 

Nay ! do not take its cruel stain 

Within your honest grasp again ! 



THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 131 

You will? then let it e'en be so." 

And as we gave him one by one 

The clasp he would but could not shun, 

There came a soft and tender glow 

Across the pallor of his cheek, 

Which spoke, as never words could speak, 

How precious unto him had been 

The good- will of his fellow-men. 

" Great God ! a father does his worst 

Who leaves his son a blood accursed ! " 

At last he said ; " ah, worse than chains 

The burden of defiled veins ! 

But of this thing enough. We hear 

Imperious battle drawing near. 

You know, ere now, what fights I 've shared, 

You know what dangers I have dared. 

You know if e'er a craven led 

Where comrades fell and comrades bled. 

You know, if e'er where foes were met, 

This hand or sabre faltered ^et ! 

Remembering this, if for this fight 

I do renounce all rank or right, — 

You will forgive ? You will not blame 

Nor whisper coward with my name ? 

Soldiers ! I cannot forth again, — 

What good fate held for me has been ; 

M}' star has sunk, my day is sped. 

I will not follow where I led ! 

Nor will I meet the signs of scorn 



132 TUE CAPTAIN'S STORY. 

Sure ill some comrade to be born, 

Who looks for honor or disgrace 

Oul^' in records of one's race. 

These smitten hands resign all claim 

To future glory, future fame. 

Where is the lip to name the good 

Found in a white man's negro blood? 

Here, with this last grasp of my hand, 

I yield forever my command. 

Forth to the fight, and ftire ye well ! 

]My future, be it heaven or hell. 

Can make, can mar, not yours — adieu ! 

Unto your countr}- be ye true ! " 

With these last words, a gleam of steel 

Met our stark e3'es, — we saw him reel, — 

Toward him rushed his aim to thwart. 

Too late ! his own sword kissed his heart ; 

And pale and dead before us lay 

Our gallant Colonel — Gustave Dupr^. 

187i. 



THE BATHER. 



'^ ^ MRM from her waist her girdle she unwound, 

* * And cast it down on the insensate turf; 
Then copse, and cove, and deep-secluded vale 
She scrutinized with keen though timid ej-es, 
And stood with ear intent to catch each stir 
Of leaf, or twig, or bird-wing rustling there. 
Her startled heart beat quicker even to hear 
The wild bee woo the blossom with a hymn, 
Or hidden insect break its lance of sound 
Against the obdurate silence. Then she smiled, 
At her own fears amused, and knew herself 
God's onl}' image by that hidden pool. 
Then from its bonds her wondrous hair she loosed, — 
Hair glittering like spun glass, and bright as though 
Shot full of golden arrows. Down below 
Her supple waist the soft and shimmering coils 
Rolled in their bright abundance, goldener 
Than was the golden wonder Jason sought. 

Her fair hands then, like white doves in a net, 
A moment fluttered mid the shining threads. 
As with a dexterous touch she higher laid 



134 THE BATHER. 

The gleaming tresses on her shapeh- head, 
Be^'ond the reach of rudel}' amorous waves. 
Then from her throat her light robe she unclasped, 
And dropped it downward, with a blush that rose 
The higher as the garment lower fell. 

Then cast she off the sandals from her feet, 
And paused upon the brink of that blue lake, — 
A sight too fair for either gods or men, 
An Eve untempted in her Paradise. 

The waters into which her young eyes looked 

Gave back her image with so true a truth. 

She blushed to look, but blushing looked again ; 

As maidens to their mirrors oft return 

With bashful boldness once again to gaze 

Upon the crystal page that renders back 

Themselves unto themselves, until their e3'cs 

Confess their love for their own loveliness. 

Her rounded cheeks, in each of which had grown, 

With sudden blossoming, a fresh red rose. 

She hid an instant in her dimpled hands ; 

Then met her pink palms up above her head. 

And whelmed her white shape in the welcoming wave. 

Around each lithesome limb the waters twined. 

And with their lucent raiment robed her foim ; 

And as her hesitating bosom sunk 

To the caresses of bewildered waves. 

The}- foam}' pearls from their own foreheads gave 



THE BATHER. 135 

For her fair brow, and showered in her hair 
The evanescent diamonds of the deep. 

Thus dall3-ing with the circumfluent tide, 
Her loveliness half hidden, half revealed. 
An Undine with a soul, she plunged and rose ; 
Whilst the white graces of her rounded arms 
She braided with the blue of wandering waves, 
And saw the shoulders of the billows yield 
Before the even strokes of her small hands, 
And laughed to see, and held her crimson mouth 
Above the crest of each advancing surge, 
Like a red blossom pendent o'er a pool, — 
Till, done with the invigorating plaj'. 
Once more she gained the bank, and once again 
Saw her twin image in the waters born. 

From the translucent wave each beauty grew 
To strange perfection. Never statue, wrought 
By cunning art to fulness of all grace, 
And kissed to life b}' love, could fairer seem 
Than she who stood upon that grassy slope 
So fresh, so human, so immaculate ! 
Out from the dusky cloisters of the wood 
The nun-like winds stole with a saintl}' step. 
And dried the bright drops from her panting form, 
As she with hurried hands once more let down 
The golden drapery of her glorious hair, 
That fell about her like some royal cloak 
Dropped from the sunset's rare and radiant loom. 



GOLD. 



I. 

Gold, virgin gold ! 
Secret scrolled on the ages old ; 
Swift eye-light of the Infinite, 
Searching earth, that palace of Time, 
With penetrant ra3-s of its glance sublime ; 

Yellow blood 

Of solitude. 
Left concealed where it congealed 
When God declared the round world ' ' good " ; 

Pangs of birth 

The infant earth 
Knew when hurled, a perfect world, 

To its place 
In the welcoming arms of space ; 

Creation's glees 

And jubilees. 
Transmuted by the first sunrise 
Into precious alchemies ; 

Gleams chaotic 

Of laws despotic. 
As yet unripped from the world's dark crj-pt ; 



GOLD. 137 

Cipher of silence, graven deep 
Where darkness and where danger sleep ; 
Magic ring 
Of marrjing, 
That gave to Time a bride sublime ; 
Primal kiss 
Of Genesis, 
Thrilling through 
The unfathomed New. 
Poem of the pristine ages 
Penned on the Beginning's pages ; 
Grand epithalamium sung 
When the World and Time were young ; 
Harmonies of centuries 
Tangled with eternities ; 
Unsoiled, unsoiling, 
Unreviled and unreviling. 
Broad-sown, unknown, 
Unbought, unsold, 

Gold, virgin gold ! 

II. 

Gold, beaten gold ! 
Hunted from its secret shrines 
In the dungeons of the mines ; 

Stained with human strife, 

Gained with human life, 

Black with falsehood's grime, 

Red with smirch of crime ; 



GOLD. 

Torn from Nature's savage shoulders, 

From her gulches, from her bowlders. 

While the nations stood and heard her 

Voices crying, " Wrong," and " Murder," 

" Woe," and " Sorrow," " Pain," and " Terror," 

And the echoes echoed, " Error ; " 

Stretched beneath the clank and clamor 

Of the oscillating hammer. 

Which a glamour spreads. 
While it swings, while it rings. 
That the multitude brings 
To see who weds 
Gold, virgin gold. 
To the whims of that tyrant old, — 

The world, which laughs and frets, 
Remembers, forgets. 
Loves, and denies, 
Yet hugs its prize, — 
Gold, talismanic gold I 
See it quiver ! 
See it shiver ! 
See the bright, ci'epuscular foil 
Stretch, and shudder, and recoil ; 
See it tremble, see it strive ; 
See it writhing, see it breathing, — 
'T is alive ! 
Coiling, twisting. 
Vainly resisting 
The quickened blows 
That smite its throes. 



GOLD. 139 

'T is a slave : 
Mute and brave, 
Still a slave. 
Red gold, dead gold. 
Twisted, graven, knotted, scrolled ; 
Woven into Beaut3''s hair ; 
Diademing scowling Care, 
And his tired brother Toil, — 

Care and Toil, twin kings 
Of the kingdom called Turmoil. 
Smitten gold. 
Written gold ! 
Mystic signet, aureate 
On the outstretched hand of Fate, 
Its triumphant glitter blent 
With Occident and Orient ; 
Scintillant its lurid gleam 
Where the Hindoo maidens dream ; 
Radiant where Memnon waits 
The opening of Ra's splendid gates, 
Where the long Nile's amber waters 
Mh'ror Afric's dusk}- daughters ; 
Sj-mbol of a law austere. 
Stamped on sphere and hemisphere ; 
Circled into wedding rings, — 
Those m3'sterious, fateful things, — 
Throning Vice in Virtue's palace, 
Moulded into priestl}' chalice, 
Yellow gold. 
Mellow gold, 



140 GOLD. 

Beaten, burnished, rendecl, rolled ; 

Glimmering, shimmering. 
Offering laid at every shrine, 
Bed for gems from every mine ; 
Fettering the ivory-wristed, 
With the robes of wantons twisted, 
By the purest hand caressed. 
Gleaming on the vilest breast, 
Blent with sorrow, blent with mirth. 
Veiling death and crowning birth, 
"Woven into gain and loss, 
Fashioned into crown and cross, — 

Decorator, desolator, 
Gold, beaten gold ! 



III. 

Gold, coined gold ! 
Molten, measured, stamped, and sold ; 
Fatal spell 
Hurled up from hell, 
Or down to mortals from Heaven's portals ; 
Blessing, evil. 
Angel, devil, — 
Sin and shame defied for it, 
Hope and love denied for it ; 
Pleasure's double. 
Twin of trouble. 
With its fatal serpent e3-es 
Entering earth's Paradise, 



GOLD. 141 



Controlling fate of Church and State, 
Which from the Grande to the Ganges 
Rings its multitudinous changes. 

All sing the king 

Who, Janus-featured, 

Double-natured, 
As a blessing, as a curse, 
For the better, for the worse, 
Sits throned above a universe 
Which, at his smile or at his frown, 
Elate arises or bows down. 

Swifth- smiting. 

Swift delighting. 
Yellow Demon, smirking Leman ; 
Heart of virtue, soul of sin. 
Of Right and Wrong the equal twin ; 

Vile deceiver. 

Sweet reliever. 
To the woi-thless lending worth ; 

J03' revealing. 

Gladness stealing, 
With its bount}', with its dole, 
Ruhng bod}-, ruling soul ; 
Sounding ocean's deepest deeps, 
Soaring where the lightning sleeps ; 
Delving in the dreariest mines. 
Kneeling at the happiest shrines ; 
Aiding eager-handed science 
Triumphantly to bid defiance 
To the powers of earth and air, 



142 GOLD. 



Air and water, earth and fire ; 

Sending Learning from his throne 
To girdle earth from zone to zone, 
To sound the seas, to scale the skies. 
To rend from stars their m3'sterics, 
And bound the world with enterprise ; 
At the funeral, at the feast. 
Mightiest oft where seeming least, 
Type of error. 
Type of terror, 
Tyrant of the day and hour 
Magic and mysterious Power ; 
Life's enjoj'ment, 
Joy's alloj'ment ; 
Yellow snare, 
Foul and fair ; 
From the cradle to the grave 
Making man its veriest slave, — 
Oh the want of it ! 
Oh the vaunt of it ! 
Gold, coined gold ! 



FROM YEAR TO YEAR. 



'TnniS is the sofa, and that is the chair, 
And the English ivy is twining there 

The marble Dante's brow ; 
And Raphael's Mary is looking down 
At Murillo's monk with the cowled crown, 

The same as a 3'ear ago. 

The same ? No ; nothing is ever the same 
From year to 3'ear, that the tongue can name : 

This scene is not, I know, — 
For there bj' that curtain of daint}' lace, 
At the balconied window, I miss a face 

That was there a 3'ear ago. 

1 looked on it from the ottoman there. 
And it looked at me from that velvet chair, 

A girl's face pure as snow. 
She looked like a being divinely bright, 
'Twixt the Holy Mother and monk, that night, 

That night just a year ago. 



144 FliOM YEAR TO YEAR. 

The south whid breathed in the curtain of lace, 
And the marble Dante gazed in her face, — 

Her face pale as his own ; 
While m}' heart, like a bird all plumed for flight, 
Stood poised on the wings of a hope that night, 

Then soared to heights unknown. 



Ah me ! I remember the rush and the thrill 

Of that flight of my heart, when stars stood still 

Compared to its wild career ! 
Ah me ! I remember it seemed so strange 
To believe that time had the power to change 

All things from year to year. 



The flowers in this slender Etruscan vase, 
With the emerald cup and the silver base, 

Are Medcllin roses rare ; 
I smelt them that night when I knelt at her feet ; 
Thej' were deathl}^ white, the}' were deathl}- sweet, 

On her brow and her braided hair. 



I could smite the vase for its scented flowers, 
I could hate this room for its vanished hours ; 

I could curse the painted stare 
Of the cruel monk, the Madonna mild, 
Who saw that night how cruell}' smiled 

The girl in the velvet chair ! 



FROM YEAH TO YEAH. 145 

Ah, maiden woman ! I believe even now 
That hour is shading your perfect brow, 

The matchless curve of your lip ; 
And Medellin roses make j-ou turn white : 
Their odor is strong, and out of their sight 

Your troubled eyes love to slip. 

Yes, this is the sofa, and that is the chair, 
And the English ivy is twining there, 

Where the books and the marbles lie ; 
And the painted Madonna hangs in her frame, 
And seems unchanged, but she is not the same — 

Any more than are you and I. 



THE GRANDMOTHER'S PRAYER. 



'' I ^HEY laid the 3'oung child on the grandmother's knee,- 

A beautiful bo}', immortality's heir ; 
His brow a pure page from life's handwriting free, 

His heart jet untroubled by sorrow or care. 
The grandmother bent o'er the fair little form, 

And smiled a sweet welcome, caressing and warm ; 
Then, laying her hand on the innocent head, 

" Oh, bless it and save it ! " she tenderly said. 



The tocsin of battle was heard far and wide ; 

The young soldier knelt at his grandmother's knee. 
And, lifting his brow to her fond kiss of pride, 

Said, " Grandmother, hast thou no blessing for me?" 
She bent her kind face, now well stricken in j-ears, 

And like a new baptism fast fell her tears. 
As, clasping her hands o'er the manly young head, 

"• Oh, bless him and save him ! " she ferventl}' plead. 



THE GRANDMOTHER'S PRAYER. 147 

The combat was over ; the wounded and slain 

ItSiy gor^- and grim where their spirits had sped ; 
The whispering winds that stole over the plain 

Grew dumb in the horrible hush of the dead. 
There, fair in his slumber as brave in his life, 

The soldier 3'outh lay mid the wrecks of the strife ; 
His lip, which the battle had robbed of its breath, 

Still smiled as it froze 'neath the finger of Death. 

Woe-mantled, the living came seeking him there ; 

The}- bore the 3'oung form to the grandmother's side. 
Her wrinkled hands smoothed out the battle-tossed hair, 

And she kissed the brave lips which smiUng had died. 
Again the swift tears from her aged ej'es fell 

O'er the darling her old heart had cherished so well ; 
Then, kneeling to pray for the young spirit sped, 

" Oh, bless it and save it ! " she solemnly said. 

" Bless it and save it ! " — Oh, eloquent prayer, 

How jo3'eth the heart in its beautiful light ! 
So brief, comprehensive, its little words bear 

A meaning which compasseth all in His sight. 
To be saved from the billows and breakers of life, 

To be blessed amid wbrldl}' temptations and strife ; 
To be saved when all this that is earthty is o'er ; 

To be blessed, to be saved, — what heart could ask more ? 



LIFE'S MUTATIONS. 



" A YE ! " croaks the crooked crone, 

-*— ^ As she walks the forest through, 
" Flaunt 3'our roses, maiden, 

And flash your ej'es of blue ! 
For life goes round in circles, — 

As I am, you may be ; 
The tender bud and the crispen leaf 

Grow on the self-same tree ! " 



" Girl, bless your bridal wreath," 

Saith the corpse upon its bier, — 
" Orange-flowers and beauty 

Must all at last end here ! 
For life goes round in circles, — 

"Where I am, j^ou must lie ; 
On the self-same stem where roses bloom, 

There do the roses die ! " 



LIFE'S MUTATIONS. 149 

" Toss not your pence so rudely," 

To the prince the pauper cried ; 
" Fortune, fickle coquette. 

Not always favors pride. 
For life goes round in circles, 

It swirleth up and down ; 
To-day, who plays the Jester may 

To-morrow wear the crown ! " 

" Walk not so calm and stately," 

Eighteousness whispered to Crime ; 
" Temptation brings strange victims 

At last to the rack of Time ! 
For life goes round in circles ; 

Where I am, you may be ; 
The good ship sails, and the good ship sinks. 

All on the self-same sea ! " 



AT THE WHEEL. 



'TT^HAT "constant emplo3'ment is constant enjoyment," 

-^ I often have heard the clear old people say ; 
But fuller the measure of my simple pleasure 
If Robin and I were but roaming to-day. 



Here I must keep bus}', though weary and dizz}'. 
Still whirling my wheel, and still spinning my thread ; 

Though harvests are 3'ellow, and bird-notes are mellow, 
And lips of wild roses glow fervently red ! 

The path through the meadow lies cool in the shadow, 
The mischievous brook laughs aloud in the vale ; 

The cr}' of the plover floats tunefully over 
The rattle of osiers that redden the swale. 



The bee, from the bosom of red-clover blossom. 
Has hurried to sip of the buckwheat in bloom ; 

The blush of the thistle, the blackbird's clear whistle. 
Are blent with the summer-day's light and perfume. 



AT THE WHEEL. 151 

The soft wandering gale fills a silvery sail 
That idly floats by on yon far-awa}' stream, 

And a frail spirit-boat 'neath the other doth float, 
Faintl}' fair, like some beautiful dream of a dream. 

With odors of myrtle the voice of the turtle 
Comes drowsily up from the valley below ; 

I hear the dull rapping of woodpecker's tapping 
The bark where the hollow old s3'camores grow. 

The beetle is humming of autumn da3's coming, 
And swings in its leaf hammock hung in the vale ; 

The lil}' gasps faintl}' as, passionless, saintly, 
It stands in the path of the libertine gale. 

The clink, clink of the blade rises clear from the glade 
Where, sharpening the scythe, stands the whistling mower ; 

While the gossiping crow, on his tall hickorj' bough, 
Sits moodil}' muttering his meaningless lore. 

There are ra3'stical fingers whose gentle touch lingers. 
It seems, as I listen, on yon golden plain. 

There blending, and shading, and loving!}- braiding 
The sunbeams astray with the beard of the grain. 

With tired hand twirling the wheel that keeps whirling. 
The wearisome spindle I speed all the day ; 

With the whirl of the wheel how m}' brain seems to reel, 
And longs from the dull hum to lunuy away ! 



152 AT THE WHEEL. 

Oh, how gladly I '11 watch the first star-ray to catch, 
That shall tell when the sun lieth low in the west ; 

When swallows home darting tell da}' is departing. 
And night brings the toiler sweet guerdon of rest. 

Then over the " hollow " and green " summer fallow " 
I shall hear the loud summons of " Co' boss ! co' boss ! " 

While " Lineback " and " Dover," breaths sweetened with 
clover. 
The cool, fragrant pastures come slowly across. 

With "Brownie" and " Daisy," milk-laden and lazj^, 
The gentle-ej'ed heifer half-standing aloof ; 

While the dew-laden grass gently yields as they pass 
To the lingering print of each slowly raised hoof. 

Then awa}"-, then away, as dies the long day, 

O'er the path that leads down to the sycamore grove, 

Where dear Robin will wait by the old wicket gate. 
With a smile for my eyes, and a heart for my love ! 



RILMA'S FAREWELL. 



TT^EAR Love ! the words are said, 
^-"^ Thou know'st we may not wed ; 

Farewell to thee, farewell : 
Upon the beach I stand 
And kiss to thee my hand ; 

Yonder the white sails swell ! 

Yea ! on the beach I stand, 
And to thee kiss my hand ; 

M}' lips thou might'st not touch, — 
'T were little, yet too much, 
'Twixt thee and me, dear friend ! 

Therefore so let it end. 

Surely thou know'st the word, 
The bitterest ever heard, — 

The woful whisper, " parted "? 
'T is but a swift, pale breath, 
And yet 'tis death, 'tis death 

Unto the loving-hearted ! 
7* 



154 RILMA'S FAREWELL. 

I see the widening space 
'Twixt mine and thy dear face, 

I know ui}' heart must break ; 
I know that thou art gone, 
I know I am alone, 

Yet smile for thy dear sake. 

Pale, sad, bereft of speech, 
I pace the shingly beach, 

I linger on the sands. 
And wring and wring my hands ; 
1 know my aching heart 

Must go where'er thou art ; 

Though through my falling tears 
I see a wall of years 

Dividing thee from me. 
As land divfdes the sea ; 
O'er it hope cannot soar, — 

I know we meet no more ! 

Thou wilt go on thy way. 
Sad for a year and day. 

By slowly fading embers ; 
A man's heart joj's again, 
A woman's dies of pain : 

He laughs, while she — remembers ! 



HOW LONG? 



'' I ^HE storm has put out the stars, and the night is 

-L bluicl ; 

But the Hours grope their waj' through the darkness, on to 

a time 
When Morning, the pink-palmed, shall come to the door 

of the East, 
And with fragrant fingers beckon one out of the gloom, 
And, choosing him, kiss him with kisses that shine like 

light. 
And, kissing him, call him her chosen, the Prince of the 

Dawn. 



The storm has put out the stars and m}- life is blind. 

I grope in the darkness back to the star of a night 

When one star shining illumined the world for me ; 

One star, — it went down, and for me it rose nevermore. 

Long have I waited in darkness to greet it again ; 

Waited for it to lay on my uplifted forehead 

The white kiss of its rare and wonderful radiance ; 



156 HOW LONG? 

Waited and watched for it to lead me upward, 
Out of the drenching darkness and gloom of the night. 
Will it come back to me never? 
Does any star set forever ? 
How long, how long, must I wait? 



IN DREAMS. 



A PRESENCE felt, but never seen ; 
A voice not heard, but understood ; 
A shadowy bliss that comes between 
My soul and my soul's widowhood ; 



A touch upon my slumbering brow ; 

A breath upon my ej'elids pressed ; 
A vision fading, that but now 

In dreams my dreamy lip caressed ; 

A voiceless echo, soft and sweet, 
And held in tremulous control, 

That wakes my wild heart's busy beat, 
And softly serenades my soul ; 

The coming of a soft eclipse, — 

Love's shadow 'twixt the world and me, 
Beneath whose veil my glowing lips 

Betray m}^ spirit's ecstasj- ; 



158 IN DREAMS. 

A reaching after glorious aims ; 

A searching of the soul's intents ; 
A looking up from earthl}' shames ; 

A kneeling at new sacraments ; 

The vision of a soul made great 

And grand by might of might}- needs ; 

The vision of a soul elate 

And strong with strength of mighty deeds ; 

A sense of something sentient 
That holds me in a spirit clasp ; 

The yearning of my Being, bent 

To grasp that which eludes my grasp ; 

The cool of dews upon my face, 

Dropped from the broken dusk of dawn ; 

A perished jo}^, a vanished grace, 
A weary sigh for something gone ; 

The breaking of sleep's golden thread ; 

The clashing of life's brazen rings ; 
A gathering gloom, a glory fled, 

A coming back to earthly things. 



IT RAINS. 



\ SUDDEN sweetness unto all the world 
•*- ^ The summer rain is bringing ; 
Glad odors from the lush, green meadow grass, 
Like larks, are upward springing. 

The scent of blossoms, growing in a wood, 

Just now above me floated, 
And from a hidden nest a thrush's song, 

Duetted and devoted. 

The fainting earth, like some fresh-watered flower, 

Revives beneath its wetting, 
And flings, from out a thousand fragrant nooks. 

Sweet things I was forgetting. 

From cypress swamps an herb}' odor comes, 

Where weedy wonders waken, 
To pour their grateful gladness out for drops 

Upon their petals shaken. 



160 IT RAINS. 

And roses, sighing by the wayside, lift 

Their gentle, Juney faces 
To read the strange handwriting of the rain 

In unfamiliar places. 

The startled violets tremble, as they drop 
Their heads to deeper hiding, 

Afraid of this mere phantom of a storm, 
Across the green earth gliding. 

The sweet of all the scented shower is mine, 
No balmy touch has missed me ; 

Why has it waked the memory of dear lips 
That one day stooped and kissed me ! 



UP THE HILL. 



T LAY my head on a daisy bed, 

My couch is of feathery ferns ; 
The sweetest bird that ever was heard 

Is singing and silent b}' turns. 
Just at my side, with a laughing tide, 

That to3''s with the odorous mosses, 
A mountain stream, like one in a dream, 

Impatiently turns and tosses. 

O vagrant rover, rollicking brook, — 

Sa}', whither so fast this morning? 
Hast brought to me from some forest nook 

No word of cheer nor of warning ? 
From ever}' accent of Nature's tongue 

Some truth is to be translated ; 
Why then are thy mountain ripples rung ? 

With what is thy swift tide freighted ? ' 

You answer, low, that ' ' yon blossom's brow 
Should show you a sign more tender ; " 

And now you quaff, with mischievous laugh, 
Yon lily-cup's scarlet splendor ! 



162 UP THE HILL. 

I hear your fleet, meandering feet 

Upon the jewel-like pebbles ; 
Where shadows fall, or where glooms appall, 

I hear your tnnefulest trebles. 



Upon your path the opulent fields 

And woods their loveliness squander ; 
You, like a young friar in disguise, 

Among them jauntily wander. 
Here, on ^'our breast you tenderly place 

The sweetly capricious roses ; 
There, from the gentian's jealous face 

You kiss the tear it discloses. 



Upon thy brink the ga}^ bobolink 

Has stilled his audacious throat, 
As if to hear, with a critic's ear, 

Thy soft and musical note. 
Beneath th}- brim th}- jubilant h3'mn 

Is thrilling the silverj' water 
With notes of praise for the wondrous ways 

Of Nature, tliy Alma Mater! 



O mountain singer, m}- mission name ! 

Sa^^ what should m}' hands be doing? 
Sa}', what is the noblest earthl}' aim 

My soul should be now pursuing? 



UP THE HILL. ' 163 

Within my grasp what good is shrined ? 

What in my life worth living ? 
To bless or benefit mankind, 

What in my grasp worth giving ? 



Thou, newly come from th}- nature-home, — 

Its pure and unworldl}' preachings 
Surely to-day can to me conve}' 

Profound and exalted teachings. 
Dost to me bear surcease from care, 

Or somnolent potions for sorrow ; 
News from my dead, or cure for the dread 

Unfaltering steps of To-morrow ? 



Life's sweet daj's pass, and the gulf of years 

Its vague deep opes to receive them ; 
Life's sweet joj'S die, — into cloth of tears 

Time's shuttles busily weave them. 
Long-cherished faiths, to the soul endeared. 

Agnostic spectres are haunting ; 
From shrines that the inmost heart revered, 

Doubt's fatal banners are flaunting. 



Dost thou not bring, in the song 30U sing 

With so much innocent riot, 
The subtile chimes of the sweet old times, 

Which knew not sorrow's fiat ; 



164 UP THE HILL. 

Nor bring the spell, remembered well, 
Dear hands once cast around me, 

When sweeter bays, when trustier praise, 
And truer friends had crowned me ? 



Or if thy coming unto me brings 

Themes worthier of my heeding, 
Why hid'st, in whatever thy gladness sings, 

A lesson beyond my reading? 
Dost bid m}^ soul to no longer yearn 

For the heights it ne'er has gained ; 
To cease to struggle, and toil, and burn 

For the Ever Unattaiued ? 



Ah ! where does it smile, that wonderful Isle, 

The Unattainable Land, — 
With the dampened fires, and the broken tyres, 

That strew its untrodden strand ; 
With its tired slaves, and its conquered braves, 

And its beacon of vain endeavor ; 
With weird control, luring soul after soul 

To seek it forever and ever ; 



With its feverish flashes, its fervid schemes, 

Its fascinations despotic. 
Its d3'ing smiles, and its beautiful dreams, 

Its aims and visions chaotic ; 



UP THE HILL. 165 

With its passion-flowers, and the ruined hopes 

On its lurid beaches burning ; 
With the shattered lives on its fatal slopes, 

Its jDilgrims sadly returning? 



Hast naught to say ? Then away, away ! 

Go turn the mill in the meadow ; 
Go lure the gale, in the willowed vale, 

To chase thy shine and thy shadow. 
The simple lay I have sung to-day 

By to-morrow will have perished ; 
Thy mystic song will to earth belong 

When mine is left uncherished ! 



ASHES OF ROSES. 



"O EMEMBER thee? Dear Love ! the thievish years, 

-^^ Which steal so much from every human jo}', 

Have robbed thine image of its frame of tears, 

But left it tints time never can clestro}'. 

On Memory's golden easel here it stands, 

In all the rare perfection that was thine 

When first, upon Life's shining, morning sands, 

Thy glad young face was lifted up to mine ! 

As then, my darUng, here thy beauty glows, — 
One white hand prisoning its pretty mate. 
The dimple ambushed in thy cheek's red rose, 
Thy chestnut curls, thy brow immaculate, 
Thy bosom swelling with its happy sighs. 
Thy life yet free from sorrow's first echpse. 
The smile that grew and budded in thine eyes, 
And bloomed at last upon thy dewy lips. 

Ah, fair the picture ! From the world's rude strife 

I turn, its sacred loveliness to kiss ; 

Though all the choicest roses of my life 

Were ground to ashes. Love, to paint me this ! 



ASHES OF ROSES. 167 

No more m}' heart against it breaks witli sighs, 
Throbs with mad passion, tastes of bitter lees ; 
But there is something dims m}- wistful e^'es. 
More fond, more true, and tenderer far than these. 

If but the heart a portal once unlock 
For love to stand within the mystic gate. 
Its footprints, like the impress on a rock. 
Dead leaves may fill, but naught obliterate. 
Regret may fade, woe weep itself to death. 
But love so close to the supernal clings, 
Though death and burial it encompasseth, 
In Memory's Heaven it wears immortal wings. 

Would I forget thee, that thou didst not dare 
Th}' life's bright girdle then to cast round me? 
Not love thee, tliat m}^ selfish, passionate prayer 
Linked not with mine th}'' fairer destiny ? 
Do we love less the rose we may not take ; 
Call less than star the star beyond our grasp ; 
Disdain tlie precious dream we do but wake 
To find unreal in our eager clasp ? 

Nay, darling, as of old I keep thee j'et, 
Without one blemish on thy beaut}' laid, 
Shrined in a niche my tears have often wet, 
But whence no faithless thought has ever strayed. 
Around the lonely ruins of my years 
The joy of having known thee twines alway, 
And flings o'er crumbling hopes and wasting fears 
A radiance that deifies decay. 



NOX. 



/"■^OME to me, tears, if come to me ye must, 
^■^ In hours like these, when all the world is far ; 
When all the bj^gone brightness of my days 
On my lone heart is shining like a star. 
Come ye, while men remember but my smiles. 
Think of my presence as a thing of songs, 
Envy my lot, and, in these silent hours. 
Dream of my joys in contrast to their wrongs. 

Come, as the raindrops from the cloudlet come, 
The burden from the cloudlet's heart to bear. 
Sparkle and shine, white diamonds of a mine 
Whose jewel-light the world may never share. 
Thy gleam shall show me, for a little while. 
The youth-coast, with its rose and amber shore 
From which men gayly sail, then ever yearn 
To drop life's iron anchors there once more. 

I think to-night of dear, affectioned lips. 
Whose kisses rest in that unlettered urn. 
White in some niche of every human life. 
Whence love and tenderness no more return. 



NOX. 1<^9 

Come to me, tears, my lonely spirit thrill 
As gentle tropic winds thrill tropic palms ; 
Fall ye, as fell those farewells which awoke 
My heart forever from its summer calms. 

I am alone, as is the pine alone, 

Left where has fallen the surrounding wood ; 

Sunshine about me, but my hidden heart 

Unbrightened in its voiceless solitude. 

Come to me, tears, — come like the twilight mist 

That o'er the dusk and lonely valley gleams ; 

Veil from me Memory's disappointing plains. 

Where rise the empty tents of life's vain dreams. 



SURRENDERED. 



'T^O-DAY, from out m^- life's fair garden fell 

-^ A fruit perfected. On the scant}' bough 
Of Friendship, I can see, alas ! too well, 
AVhere once it grew, a saddening voidness now. 
A goodlj- graft it was ; one I had wound 
"With ni3^ own heart, to bind it safe and warm 
From frosts and tempests which too oft had found 
And hurt dear things I strove to shield from harm. 
A human heart was faithful ligature. 
But to the twig who ma^' its bloom secure ? 

Ah, well ! what matters it? Ripe fruit will fall ; 

Perfection's twin is Progress, not Decay ; 

The bough that grows across the orchard wall 

Must drop its apple on the outer way. 

'T is true, bej-ond the limit of m}' reach 

Has passed a life my own life must forego ; 

But it is in the world, to learn, to teach. 

To gain, to give, to struggle, and to grow. 

'T was mine, 't is not mine, — what should I regret? 

A sun comes ever up, for one sun set. 



WAYNE. 



"XTE hills of Wayne ! ye hills of Wayne ! 

-*• In dreams I see your slopes again ; 
In dreams mj' childish feet explore 
Your daisied dells beloved of yore ; 
In dreams, with eager feet, I press 
Far up 3'our heights of loveliness, 
And stand, a glad-eyed girl again, 
Upon the happy hills of Wayne ! 

I see once more the glad sunrise 
Break on the world's awakening ej^es ; 
I see once more the tender corn 
Shake out its banners to the morn ; 
I see the sleepj' valle3's kissed 
And robbed of all their robes of mist, 
When laughing Da}" is queen again 
Of all the verdant hills of Wayne. 

I bind about my childish brow 

The bloomy thorn-trees' scented snow ; 



172 WAYNE. 

I see upon the fading flowers 
The fatal fingers of the hours ; 
I see the distant village spire 
Catch on its tip a star of fire, 
As in my dreams the sun again 
Goes down behind the hills of Wayne. 

The cowboy's coaxing call across 

The meadow comes, — " Co' boss, co' boss ! " 

And milky-odored cattle lift 

Their hoofs among the daisy drift. 

The da}?^ is over all too soon ; 

And up the sky the haunted moon 

Glides with its ghost, and bends again 

Above the wooded hills of Wayne. 

Ah ! I have laughed in many a land ; 
And I have sighed on many a strand 
And loneh^ beach, where written be 
The solemn scriptures of the sea ; 
And I have climbed the grandest heights 
The moon of midnight ever lights ; 
But memory turned from all, again 
To kneel upon the hills of Waj'ne. 

Ye hills of Wayne ! ye hills of Wayne ! 
Ye woods, ye vales, ye fields of grain ! 
Ye scented morns, ye blue-e3'ed noons ! 
Ye ever unforgotten moons ! 



WAYNE. 173 

No matter where mj' latest breath 
Shall freeze beneath the kiss of death, — 
Ma}' some one bear me back again 
To sleep among the hills of Wayne ! 



A WOMAN'S WISH. 



"IT 70ULD I were lying in a field of clover, 
' Of clover cool and soft, and soft and sweet, 

With dusky clouds in deep skies hanging over. 
And scented silence at my head and feet. 

Just for one hour to slip the leash of Worry, 
In eager haste, from Thought's impatient ueck, 

And watch it coursing, in its heedless hurry 
Disdaining Wisdom's call or Duty's beck ! 

Ah ! it were sweet, where clover clumps are meeting 
And daisies hiding, so to hide and rest ; 

No sound except my own heart's sturd}^ beating, 
Rocking itself to sleep within m}- breast, — 

Just to lie there, filled with the deeper breathing 
That comes of hstening to a wild bird's song ! 

Our souls require at times this full unsheathing, — 
All swords will rust if scabbard-kept too long ; 



A WOMAN'S WISH. 175 

And I am tired, — so tired of rigid duty, 
So tired of all my tired hands find to do ! 

I yearn, I faint, for some of life's free beauty, 

Its loose beads with no straight string running through ! 

Aye, laugh, if laugh you will, at my crude speech ; 

But women sometimes die of such a greed, — 
Die for the small joys held beyond their reach, 

And the assurance they have all they need ! . 



HIC JACET. 



\ ND this is life : to live, to love, to lose ! 
•^-^ To feel a jo}' stir, like an unsung song, 
The deep, unwrit emotions of our souls ; 
Then, when we fain would utter it, to find 
Our glad lips stricken dumb. 

To watch a hope 
Climb like a rising star, till from the heights 
Of fair existence it sends lustre down. 
Whose radiance makes earth's very shadows shine ; 
Then suddenly to see it disappear. 
Leaving a bleak, appalling emptiness 
In all the sk}' it did illuminate. 

To build up, stone by stone, a temple fair. 
On whose white altars we do burn our days ; 
To form its arches of our dearest dreams. 
To shape its pillars of our strongest strength, — 
Then suddenly to see that temple fall, 
A broken and irreparable wreck. 



HIC JACET. 177 

Its shape all shapeless, and its formless form 
In ruthless Ruin's unrelenting grasp. 

To veil our shrinking e3'es lest they should see 
Life's grim appraisers, Death and Burial, 
Come down the path that leads across our hearts. 
And write us paupers in the Book of Love. 

To dream, in all life's happy arrogance, 
Life's proud proportions limitless, then to find 
Life's limit narrowed down to one fresh grave ; 
To stand beside that new-made mound and feel 
Within that cell is locked forever up 
The precious hone}', gathered drop by drop 
From out the fairest flower-fields of our souls ; 
Loneh" and desolate to cast ourselves. 
In some White City of the Silent, down 
Beside some cold, forbidding marble door, 
And feel ourselves forever shut away 
From that which was our dearest and our own ; 
To know, however earnestl}' we knock. 
That door will ne'er be opened unto us ; 
To know the dweller there will never step 
Beyond the boundary of that cruel gate ; 
To know, howe'er we plead, no lip therein 
Will break into its old accustomed smile, 
The folded hands stretch out no welcomings, 
The fastened eyelids never lift themselves 
Again in answering anguish, or glad love. 
From out the frozen bondage of their sleep. 

8* L 



178 HIC JACET. 

'T is this to love and bury out of sight 
Some precious darling of our dearest years, — 
Some far outstretching root of our own hearts, 
Some flower}^ branch that we had hoped to train 
Along the loftiest trellises of Hope. 

Life, Love, and Loss ! Three little words that make 
The compass of that varied road which lies 
Stretched out between our swaddles and our shroud ! 

Life, Love, and Loss ! Three ripples on one brook : 
Three widening branches of one mighty stream ; 
Three stemless currents, emptying themselves 
Into one vast and vague Eternity ! 



TWO. 



'TnO one he brought the rarest flowers 

-^ That gold could buy, 
And gave them with the courteous smile 

That masked a sigh. 
Upon the other he bestowed, 

With scarce a look, 
A few wild violets, gathered by 

A wayside brook. 

When from the skies, that golden day, 

Went out the sun. 
Of all the flowers the first received, 

Remained not one ! 
Some lured her swans ; some gayly graced 

The fawn she petted ; 
Some decked her starling's cage : all died, 

Not one regretted. 

The other shyl}' from the world 

Turned her apart, 
And hid her wayside violets 

Upon her heart. 



180 TWO. 

And he who gave to each that day 

Such different share, 
B}^ one was scorned ; the other breathed 

His name in prayer ! 

Years afterward, a woman died, — 

A lonelj' creature, 
Whose sorrows were not written out 

On form or feature ; 
But they who shrouded her do say, 

Dead on her breast, 
Close, close unto her cold dumb heart, 

Were violets pressed. 



TO BE. 



/^ DEATH ! wert thou only a journej^ to take, 
^■^ Just a pilgrimage, whence to return by and by, 
How many who boast of the happiest hearts, 
From the world and its worry would turn them and die ; 
In the realms of the resting rejoiced to sojourn, — 
If they could but return, — if they could but return ! 

If we only could die for a day, or an hour. 
And the tramp of our troubles could go on above 
Our quieted hearts, which no longer would ache. 
Nor break with their burdens of hate or of love, — 
How sweet from existence thus briefly to sever, 
Unawed by the awful Forever and Ever. 

Not to sleep, but to die, — with no sense left awake, 
Not a pulse left to thrill, not a nerve left to quiver, — 
Then calmly to float out, uncaring, ungrieved. 
Across the deep dark of the fathomless river ; 
To tarry awhile, till the turn of the tide. 
In the heavenl}' hush of the echoless side. 



182 TO BE. 

Could we lift a white finger and hail, when we would, 
The mystical barge from the mystical shore, 
What woes would we break from to beckon and wait, 
O Death ! for the undreaded dip of thj' oar : 
Glad to lay off our lives, as our robes are laid off. 
Could we wear them again when but rested enough. 

But it never has been, and it never can be ; 
We must weave out our lives to their uttermost end. 
Let the warp and the woof be of iron or gold, 
Wrought with roses that ravish, or thistles that rend ; 
And I would not be dead, like the dead in the grave, 
Not for rest the profoundest that death ever gave ; 

For 'tis sweet to exist, it is blessed to be, — 
To share of the sea, and the stars, and the sun, 
To drink of the air, to exult in the Ught, 
To be of the wonderful universe — One ! 
Though a shadow that lurks in life's vallej^ beguiles 
Our feet to press on to the Infinite Isles. 



"ONE FOR YOU, AND ONE FOR ME." 



"/^NE for you, and one for me" — 

^^ Two lads under an orchard tree, 
Counting the fruit}' favors east 
Down on the turf by last night's blast ; 
Yellow apple, and mellow pear, 
And sunny peach, for each a share. 
" One for you, and one for me " — 
Truths not always the whole truth be. 
The young cheeks blush, the young hearts stir ; 
" One for you, and one for me" — 
And both for her ! 

" One for j-ou, and one for me " — 
Two youths stand where the waltzers be, 
And watch the face of one fair girl 
Float like a rose mid the rush and whirl. 
To each she gives a word, a glance, 
A witching smile, a promised dance ; 
Then drifts the line of dancers down. 
Two faces flush, two foreheads frown : 
One mutters, " This no more shall be ; " 
The other, " Not so equally 
We stand with her ! " 



184 "ONE rOR YOU, AND ONE EOE, ME." 

" One for 3'ou, and one for me" — 
For each a chance, whate'er it be. 
Two stern men, in a lonesome place, 
Back to back from each other pace ; 
They halt — they wheel — a word — the ring 
Of pistols hush the birds that sing ! 
Two gallant forms, both smitten, lie 
Ten paces parted, sure to die. 
"One for you, and one for me " — 
How close the old da3's seem to be, 
With both for her ! 

" One for you, and one for me " — 
Oh, reconciling memor}-. 
That turns, with one sweet, magic breath, 
To gold the iron chains of death ! 
" Lift me," said one. " See, each forgives 
The other, whilst that other lives." 
E'en as he spoke, a marriage train 
Swept down the road that crossed the plain, 
And each saw in the fair young bride 
The face of her for whom he died. 
" Not for you, and not for me," 
The chilling lips breathed huskil}', 
"And — both for her!" 



FAREWELL TO MEXICO. 



nr^RUE hearts, stanch friends, dear Mexico, farewell ; 

-*• Would I could pluck from my o'erflowing heart 
Some rare bouquet of words wliose depths might tell 
What lips can speak not, nor these tears impart. 
Between me and the shore the widening blue 
Tells of the deepening seas to which I go ; 
From lessening barks floats back a faint " Adieu." 
My soul replies — Farewell to Mexico ! 



I came a pilgrim to thy ctoried strand, 
I go like one who into exile goes ; 
Surely I've found, in this enchanted land, 
Some region where the fabled lotus grows. 
I sigh not that so far across the deep 
Fair Louisiana's orange-blossoms blow ; 
I only watch thy fading shores and weep, 
Because I bid farewell to Mexico ! 



186 FAREWELL TO MEXICO. 

Bright picture-land ! m}' thoughts, like trailing vines, 
Wind back th}' hills, thy vales, thy lakes along ; 
Cling round thine altars and thy ruined shrines, 
And twine where mj'steries and where memories throng. 
Ye skies, in which resplendent sunsets burn, 
Ye plains, ye palms, 3'e peerless peaks of snow ! 
From what rare realms of lovehness I turn 
To sigh, and say — Farewell to Mexico ! 



Now faint and fainter grows the line of shore. 
Upon our path springs the pursuing wind ; 
Our plunging prow tastes the blue brine once more, 
While like a plume our white wake streams behind. 
Like one last friend, proud Orizaba stands. 
Against the sunset, 'neath his crown of snow : 
We call aloud, we wave to him our hands ; 
He fails, he fades, — Farewell to Mexico ! 



ELEANOR. 



TIj^LEANOR, fair Eleanor! 
■*-^ Dear, dainty, and deliglitful, 
Of'visions rare, of visions fair. 

My heart slie renders quite full. 
Not of to-day is her sweet way, 

Nor y ester, nor to-morrow ; 
But from some epoch long by -gone 

Each charm she seems to borrow. 



Eleanor, sweet Eleanor ! 

I watch her winning graces. 
And in my heart at once upstart 

Full twenty loA'el}' faces 
That hang in frames, with painters' names 

Attached, whose fame doth render 
To fleeting beauty's mortal dower 

Their own immortal splendor. 



188 ELEANOR. 

Eleanor, quaint Eleanor ! 

With high-heeled slippers ringing, 
With manner meek, with patch on cheek, 

And netted workbag swinging — 
A special charm — on rounded arm 

From elbow-sleeve out peeping, 
With kerchief crossed on pointed waist, 

And paniered skirt down sweeping, — 



Toward the chapel on the hill. 

This morn she stepped demurely : 
" Some sketch unique from frame antique," 

I said, " has wandered surely ! " 
The buckles shone on shoe and zone, 

The dainty ruff rose starchl}^, 
As 'neath her quaint poke-bonnet's brim 

She glanced me greeting archly. 



Yonder, in that high-backed chair, 

Last night I saw her sitting, 
Serenel}^ sweet, in raiment neat, 

And busy with her knitting. 
How quaint her dress, how smooth her tress, 

There in the old chair rocking, — 
Intent, O cunning little maid. 

On toeins off a stockins; ! 



ELEANOR. 189 



Eleanor, wise Eleanor ! 

Thus gracing her own graces, 
She gains a dower of winsome power 

Denied more perfect faces. 
Ah ! even now, as her 3'oung brow 

Peeped from its old-time bonnet, 
She seemed like modern music set 

To some mediaeval sonnet. 



Eleanor, rare Eleanor ! 

A truce to idle rh^'ming ; 
Yet doth belong ofttimes to song 

Tones deeper than its chiming ; 
And, 3'ears untold, my heart will hold, 

With memories sweet to cherish, 
Her image, quaintlj^ picturesque, 

Too fair a thing to perish. 



MY SOUL. 



1% yTY soul unto my heart did thus complain : 
-^^^ How long, O jailer, wilt thou here detain 

My restless spirit? 
How long ere I may seek, in yonder skies, 
The hallowed and the unconceived-of prize 

That souls inherit? 

How long ere Time, the High-priest, comes to lay 
His hand upon this dungeon door of clay 

And break its bars, 
And set me free from mortal fears and feuds 
To seek the grand and solemn solitudes 

Among the stars ? 

O heart, the heavenly spirit's earthlj' twin, 
O mortal, locking the immortal in 

With human ke3's, 
Have mercy ! Hide awhile thj' watchful face, 
And let my prisoned pinions &y to trace 

Eternities ! 



MY SOUL. 191 

And yet, O tender, though most cruel heart, 
I 've much to thank thee for before we part. 

To rejoin never, 
Ere Time's last billows I for aye have sounded, 
Ere I the dim and misty cape have rounded 

Of the Forever ! 



I from life's clambering vines rich blooms have plucked, 
And from its sweetest fruits my lips have sucked 

Delicious juices ; 
And I have quaffed that essence from above. 
That only heavenly thing — pure, faithful Love — 

Which life produces. 



The golden chalice of existence, lifted 

High on the wave, into my grasp was drifted ; 

Its luscious wine 
In purple flow upon the beaker darkled, 
And o'er the brim to lips athirsting sparkled 

In draughts divine ! 



In thy stern keeping I have grown the wings 
Now fledged and pining for far nobler things, 

O guardian heart ! 
Too long I 've fettered been to earth's cold floor, 
I 've loved and been beloved ; there is no more — 

Now let us part. 



192 MY SOUL. 

I hear thee build the scaffold of my j^ears, 

Of sorrows, smiles, few hopes, and many fears, 

As daj's diminish ; 
I hear th}^ thick throbs fall like hammer blows, 
Here muffled by a thorn, and there a rose, — 

When wilt thou finish ? 

When comes the honr, at midnight, dawn, or day, 
When thou wilt draw these bolts and bars away 

With bated breath, 
And ope for me the portals of this place, 
And bid me that grim executioner face, 

Relentless Death? 



Death, at whose hands we find our noblest birth ; 
Who frees us from the swaddling-clothes of earth 

And all its harms ; 
Who rocks the cradle of Eternity, 
And la3's us loving, grateful, glad, and free, 

In God's own arms ! 



THE CHRISTENING. 



T SAW the consecrated water fall, 

Unconscious bo}-, upon thy upturned brow ; 
I saw the solemn rites, I heard the vow 
That swore to shelter thee from this world's thrall, 
And aught of sin that might th}- life engall. 
E'en while the vow was uttered, saw I Care, 
And Sorrow with his thorn-embroidered pall. 
And siren-faced Temptation gathering there. 
The}' said, " Though ye may love and guard this child, 
Who is of earth must share of earthly dross ; 
Ye cannot keep him pure and undefiled. 
Through us o'er trial he must triumph win ; 
We sign him with the sign of life's great cross, 
That, knowing evil, he may shrink from sin." 



MYSTERY. 



A YE, all is mystery. Not the skies aloue, 
AVitli their unfathomed secrecies of stars ; 
Nor science and religion with their wars ; 
Nor yet earth's lonely lands 'twixt zone and zone, 
With hidden histories carved in voiceless stone : 
But, too, sweet friendship that has left its scar 
In passing, and the precious love that 's gone 
Out like a tide, and left ns on the bar 
Of bitterness, where bright waves come no more ; 
Ourselves, which to ourselves are mj-steries ; 
The potent spark which speaks from shore to shore ; 
Creeds, which such hosts of cruel doubt involve ; 
Unbounded thought which through the boundless flies ; 
And life that problem we must die to solve. 



THE WIND. 



^T^HE wind, that poet of the elements, 
■^ To-night comes whistling down our tropic lanes, 

And wakes the slumbrous hours with sweet refrains ; 

From creamy cups, filled with magnolia scents. 
His luscious lips have gained rich recompense 

For scaling those green towers ; to him complains — 

While shy acacias shake their tawny manes — 

The lonesome lily of her discontents ! 
The jasmine, with her white soul in her face, 

Bestows her holy kisses on his mouth ; 

Before the pilgrim-minstrel violets place 
The purple censers of their fervent youth, 

And nodding poppies, with a drowsy gi-ace, 

Anoint his feet with dream-oils of the South. 



DON'T YOU REMEMBER? 



I. 
T3 OAMINGr among the daisies, you and I, 
-*- ^ The tangled drifts of daisies, glad and young, 
Beneath the azure of a cloudless sky. 
The zephyrs catching, as the}' wander b}-. 

The tender accents falling from 3'our tongue — 

Don't 3'ou remember ? 

n. 

A country glow upon ray girlish cheek, 

As side b}^ side the wooded slopes we rise, 
Or in the fresh spring mould the beech-sprouts seek, 
Or part the rushes by the winding creek, 
Reading sweet secrets in each other's ej'es — 

Don't you remember? 

III. 
The soft wind tossing back my light brown hair, 

The robins building in the apple-trees ; 
A scent of roses on the morning air, 
The birth of buds about us everywhere, 

A warm and tender gladness on the breeze — 

Don't 3'ou remember? 



DON'T YOU REMEMBER? 197 

IV. 

The brook that leaped adown the mountain height 
And sped away, nor ever looked behind, 

As if it feared the stern old mountain might 

Find out the secret of its hasty flight. 
And follow on its truant feet to bind — 

Don't you remember? 

V. 

The hills we climbed through merry baths of dew 
To catch the sun's light on our beaming faces, 
Ere he might cast his beams on hearts less true 
Than 3'ours to me, Love, or than mine to 3'ou, 
Wasting the treasure of his first embraces — 

Don't you remember ? 

VI. 

The stream meandering through the vale below. 

The marshy meadow's reedy banks between, 
"Where the coquettish cowslips flirted so 
With every breeze, or bent their bright lips low 
And kissed the water from their beds of green — 

Don't 3'Ou remember ? 

VII. 

The bit of river southward of the town, 

Pale in the dawn, like some gray lock of hair 
That Winter might have clipped from liis old crown, 
And given to Spring, to keep when he was gone, 
In kindly memorj' of him to wear — 

Don't 30U remember? 



198 DON'T YOU REMEMBER? 

VIII. 

The pollard willow, where the honej-'bees 
Gave concerts in the branches all da}' long ; 

The blackbirds whistling in the hickorj'-trees ; 

The bobolink on a milkweed in the breeze, 
Almost committing suicide with song — 

Don't you remember ? 

IX. 

The fallen petals by the fruit trees given 

To drape with white the emerald robes of May, 
Along the country lanes and roadsides driven, 
As if some j'oung bride in her flight to Heaven 
Her bridal wreath had scattered on the wa}' — 

Don't you remember? 

X. 

The bloodroot that came up with such a shriek 

Whene'er we pulled it from its hiding-places ; 
The plants and mosses that we used to seek. 
While Earth with her rent bosom could not speak. 
But as we robbed her breathed hard in our faces — 

Don't you remember? 

XI. 

The old beech woods upon the hillsides steep, 
Where the wild honeysuckle always grew ; 
Fair golden harvests that you loved to reap, 
Sweet golden harvests that I loved to keep, 

Blessed by the sunshine and baptized with dew — 

Don't vou remember? 



DON'T YOU llEMEMBEll? 199 

XII. 

The quaint old garden with its gravelled walks, 

Its grass-plots stai-red with golden dandelions, 
Its daflbdils, May-pinks, and hollyhocks, 
Its white sj-ringa with sweet-smelling stalks, 
And neighbors coming after slips and scions — 

Don't 3'ou remember? 

XIII. 

There 'neath my chin you held the buttercup, 
Some truth 30U saucily declared to prove ; 
Then cried, when bashfully my ej'es would droop, 
" A girl's blush is the flag her heart runs up 
To signal its surrender unto Love ! " — 

Don't you remember? 

XIV. 

And then 3'ou clasped my brown hand in your own ; 

You know how wilfull}^ you could persist ; 
There was a strange new music in your tone, 
Thrilhng and sweet, — well, we were all alone, 

I may mistake, but — were my lips not kissed? — 

Don't yon rememlx'r? 

XV. 

Then how the village bells rang out one da}'. 
How joyfully we two walked side by side ; 
The church door opened and we knelt to pra}'', 
Friends crowded round their kindly words to sa}', 

And shake our hands, and some one called me bride — 

Don't vou remember? 



200 DON'T YOU REMEMBER? 

XVI. 

Our bark since then has touched on many strands ; 

Our wandering feet have roamed in many cUmes, 
Our brows been kissed by suns of far-off lands ; 
New friends, dear Love, have clasped our willing hands, 

But the old times, the ever dear old times — 

We both remember ! 



ANGELE. 



T TOW didst thou rest, dear Love, last night 
-^ ■■• In thy narrow, narrow bed? 
Was the 3'oung rose quiet that, waxen white, 
Kept watch by thy hidden head, 
Angele ! 
Watch by thy hidden head? 



What did the cypress say to thee 

As it drooped by thy young feet? 
Did it tell thee, darling, it stood for me, 
And bid thee to slumber sweet, 
My Love ! 
Bid thee to slumber. Sweet? 
9* 



202 ANG^LE. 

Now has my heart forgot its strength, 

And forgot its sturd}' pride ; 
And my Hfe a dream is of dreary length, 
With thee unto it denied, 
Angele ! 
Thee unto it denied. 



All night I strode the cold sea beach ; 
And the waves came groping there, 
For a treasure wailing be^-ond their reach 
With an unavailing prayer. 
Dear Love ! 
Wild, unavailing pra3'er. 



Had the}' not chilled thy bosom white. 

And exulted o'er thy charms, 
And then cast thee forth to the outer night 
From satiate, kindless arms, — 
Poor child ! 
Careless and cruel arms? 



Had they not bruised thy forehead fair, 

And betrayed thy tender cheek. 
And the sea-weeds twisted into thy hair, 
And stifled thy dying shriek, — 
O Love ! 
Stifled thy dying shriek? 



ANGJiLE. 20^ 

The salt sea spray leaps up again 

To this breast unto thee denied ; 
How I curse each billow that dares profane 
The brow thou hast sanctified, 
Angela ! 
Kissed, and so sanctified. 



I hear the poniards of the rain. 

As they stab the earth in sleep ; 
But they cannot smite thee back to thy pain, — 
I buried thee down too deep, 
Angele ! 
Buried thee down too deep. 



Beneath the muffling moss and grass 

They may slide, and cringe, and creep ; 
And the under roots of thy cypress pass, 
But cannot disturb thy sleep, 
Lost one ! 
Cannot disturb thy sleep. 



Though swift they slip, and hide perchance 

Where thy gleaming headboard -stands. 
They can never into thy ^oung face glance, 
They cannot unfold thy hands, 
Angele ! 
Poor little folded hands. 



204 ANGELE. 

The rain ! 't is on my foreliead j-et, — 

For my feet there is no rest ; 
And the skies are dark with a dull regret ; 
They 've drowned the moon in the west, — 
Ah me ! 
Drowned the moon in the west. 



Didst sleep, my Love, the whole night long 

With thy white hands on thy breast, 
And the fresh young lilies thy locks among, 
As when thou wert laid to rest, 
Fair girl ! 
Tenderly laid at rest ? 



All night was thy sweet sleep profound. 

Was thy clinging shroud unstirred. 
Was thy slim grave undisturbed by a sound. 
No echoes of anguish heard, 
Angele ! 
Echoes of an2;uish heard ? 



The rosebuds in thy fingers prest. 

Did they dare, dear Love, to die? 
They were buried alive upon thy breast, — 
I env3^ them as they lie. 
Beloved ! 
Where it were bliss to die. 



ANGELE. 205 



Yet falls the drear, unpitying rain ; 

And the lips of night are pale, 
As they kiss, on yon tumultuous main, 
The wings of the passing gale, 
Dear one ! 
Stormy wings of the gale. 



All night I strode the beaten beach, 

Where the waves knelt prone and pale, 
With their white lips moaning, in broken speech, 
Thy name, my beloved Angele, 
Th}' name ! 
Moaning for thee, Angele. 



They sought my life, the billows blue. 

And I did not stand apart ; 
There is no more harm that a foe can do 
When he has broken the heart. 
Dear one ! 
Broken a loving heart. 



The tempest rode the whirling world, 

And the sea arose in might ; 
And I rushed where billows the blackest swuied, 
And bade them my life to smite, — 
Ha! Ha! 
Vainly I bade them smite ! 



206 ANG^LE. 

Wh}', thou hast left th}' grave, Angela ! 

And thy shroud floats on the deep ; 
There it beckons to me — ah ! wh}^ so pale ? 
My darling ! couldst thou not sleep, — 
Not sleep? 
Couldst thou not from me sleep? 



Thy tresses drip with ocean damps. 
And thy dear lips, do they move? 
All the lamps are out in night's golden camps, 
But never the lamps of love, 
Angele ! 
Quenchless are lamps of love. 



I thought thee prone, like some young nun, 

All at peace in her lone cell ; 
On thy breast a cross, all th}' penance done. 
Who dared to dissolve the spell 
Of sleep. 
Kissing th}' e3'elids down ? 



The black locks of the swart queen Night 

Are all trailing on the sea ; 
But they cannot veil thee out of my sight, 
With little hands stretched to me, 
My Love ! 
Little hands stretched to me. 



ANGl^LE. 207 

Weird voices answer from tlie shore 
To tlie shout of storm-lost waves, 
And the solemn pines with sympathant roar 
Respond from the forest naves. 
And chant, — 
Chant, like exultant braves ! 



What phosphorescent gleam now plaj-s 

Where the crested waters sweep ? 
Ha ! the billows burn with the frenzied gaze 
Of ejes that no more will sleep, — 
Ej-es doomed 
Never again to sleep ! 



Thy grave is empty ! From the night 

I can hear thee calling me ; 
And each billow's crest is a beacon light 
To guide me afar to thee. 
My Own ! 
Guide me afar to thee. 



Oh, wait ! Angele, fear not the dark, 
And fear not the tempest's breath ! 
I will come to thee in a swift, lone bark, 
Steered by the helmsman Death, 
Angele ! 
Wait, and fear not the dark ! 



THE SPECTRE'S BRIDAL. 



\ SKELETON once ran away with a ghost, — 

Oh, the graveyard wall it was high and damp ! 
But no sentinel's challenge of " Who goes there? " 
Rung down o'er the dead in their marble camp. 
So they clambered high, and thej' clambered low, 
And never a corpse turned over to throw 
From his mouldering e^'es a forbidding stare, 
To check the flight of this singular pair. 

The skeleton, he had lain quiet for j^ears 

In his handsome coffin of precious wood, 
Maintaining a dignified attitude there. 

Just as a virtuous skeleton should. 
The ghost had belonged to a beautiful maid, 
Left here by herself onl}' yesterday, dead, — 
She who never before had anywhere gone 
Without some respectable chaperon. 

The}^ buried her here, in her fresh, sweet 3'outb, 
Like a flower that we put away to press. 

With a lingering look and a tender touch. 
In the first bright bloom of its loveliness, 



THE SPECTRE'S BRIDAL. 209 

And here she was now, b}' a young man's side, — 
Young, for he ceased to grow old when he died ; 
And, although he was heartless, his gallant bones 
Were moved at the sight of the girl's tombstones. 



And that gidd^' young ghost, she could n't keep still ; 

The coffin was close, and the grave was so damp ! 
And how could she judge of the fit of her shroud, 

Or the style of her coiffure, without an}' lamp ? 
The courteous skeleton, Ij'ing next door, 
Disma^'ed, heard the ghost her sad trials deplore ; 
And, though hitherto quite resigned to his fate, 
He now felt impelled to articulate. 

He struggled to sit, and he struggled to stand ; 

But his joints would n't work, and his limbs felt queer : 
" I declare, I 've grown loose in mj- habits," he said, 

"Though my habits were ' fast' when I came to sleep 
here." 
He wriggled his jaws, and he nodded his head ; 
His long folded fingers he cautiousl}' spread ; 
Then with one supreme effort stepped out in the air : 
The ghost of the girl he found alreadv there. 



The slender moon la}' in the summer}' sky 

Like the paring of somebody's great thumb-nail. 

And, under its shining, the skeleton looked. 

To the pretty young ghost, rather mouldy and stale. 



210 THE SPECTHE'S BRIDAL. 

The meeting was awkward in man}' respects, — 

As seems very natural, if one reflects, — 

For tlie ghost's taste in dress could now naught avail her, 

And the skeleton was not right fresh from his tailor. 

They stood in Death's horrible kingdom of Hush, 

By his dungeons of dumbness, cold, dreary, and deep ; 
"While, ripe on night's mystical prairies above, 

Grew the harvest of stars which the morning would 

reap ; 
And meteors — fire-laden argosies — sailed 
The gulfs of the air, where no passing voice hailed 
To question whence came they, or where were they 

bound, 
O'er the oceans of space in the silence profound. 

And yonder, and yonder, and yonder revealed, 
Were unlimited realms for unlimited flight. 

Well, what could that ghost and that skeleton do? 
Like some mortals, the two fell in love at first sight. 

They stood there alone, and the skeleton saw 

That here was his chance for no mother-in-law ! 

For the rest? Opportunity forms the base 

Of most of the sins of the human race. 

There were none to consult with regard to each other, — 
The ghost quite forgot to ask. Was he rich? 

He did not inquire if her dear great-grandfather 

Made candles, or soap, or had known how to stitch. 



THE SPECTRE'S BRIDAL. 211 

She felt too light-headed for cavil or question ; 
He felt too polite to make any suggestion ; 
And both, perhaps, felt how awkward 't would be 
For either to climb up a family-tree ! 



So joined they their hands, these two innocent spectres, 

Nor vowed they such vows as are blest from above ; 
They talked not of loving till " death do us sever," 

But swore, " naught shall sever us while we both love." 
Remember, the maid was a ver}' young woman, — 
A maiden's first lover oft seems superhuman ; 
And as for that skeleton, — well, 't was not odd he 
Should say to himself that the ghost was no-bod}'. 



Their kisses were pure as the pure polar ice. 

And as bloodless and cold as a toad's foot at noon ; 

And misty and chill was their strange wedding-ring, 
For it was the wide ring that encircled the moon. 

Much talking there was not, for mere lack of tongues ; 

Much sighing there was not, for mere lack of lungs ; 

But the wedding went on, without prayer, without priest, 

Without altar, or organ, or favor, or feast. 



Then the skeleton climbed, and the ghost she soared ; 

Over graves of the " oldest and best " the}' groped ; 
But the beds lay deep, and the)' slept so sound, 

Not a slumberer found out the pair had eloped. 



212 THE SPECTRE'S BRIDAL. 

Not one marble door slid out of its place ; 

Not one woman lifted a peering face ; 

For comfort, go purchase a graveyard " share," — 

Tlie neighbors all mind their own business there. 

Up, over the wall, where the whole night long 
All slim}' and sleepy the green lizards hide, 
Beyond the grim gates of the Garden of Graves, 
The skeleton hurries his ghostly young bride. 
Up, up, o'er the roofs of the slumbering town ; 
On, on, where the river goes hurrying down, — 
'Twas the oddest sight in the world, I'm sure, 
This bridegroom and bride on their wedding tour. 

The owl on her branch of an old hollow tree 

Uplifted her lids at a sight so new, 
And ruffled her feathers, and hooted aloud 

Her impudent query, " To whoo? To whoo? 
As onward the}' sped, and a dew of affright 
Stood out on the face of the startled night. 
And the white little moon slipped under a cloud, 
At the gleam of the 3'ouug woman's wedding shroud. 

And somebod}- sa^'s that the Yucca rang out 
That night from its tower of pallid bells. 

As the pair went by, a chime that seemed 
Half wedding marches, half funeral knells ; 

And the tall green cane and the nodding rice 

Bowed down but once, though the}' shivered thrice. 



THE SPECTRE'S BRIDAL. 213 

As over them sped, most horribly human, 

This frame of a man and this ghost of a woman ! 

How vast their domain in the regions of space ! 

How starry their night-times, their mornings how sunny, 
Whilst the}' dine on that bliss we poor mortals know well, 

A course of true love, and for dessert no mone}' ! 
Though she had her own stage of existence, this bride, 
The couple were never once known to ride ; 
But from furtherest star to earth's furtherest ocean, 
They travelled content with their own locomotion ! 

The}" have their own sport, such as suiteth them best ! 

When we shrink at the shriek of the wind, sometimes, 
'T is onl}- the skeleton whistling a tune 

He is trying to set to his pretty wife's rhymes ! 
To ocean thej' carry the dangerous breeze 
That startles the sailor with suddening seas. 
And who has not heard, mid the tempest's wild battle, 
The skeleton's fingers his window-sash rattle ? 

And oft, when we lie on our pillows and quake 

At the sound of the shutters that clatter so loud, 
'T is only the skeleton scurrying b}'. 

With a rattle of bones and the swish of a shroud. 
Up, over the roof of my silent bedchamber, 
I often and oft do hear the two clamber. 
With footsteps that are not of earth or of air. 
Yet are here, and are yonder, and everywhere. 



214 THE SPECTRE'S BRIDAL. 

Their hone^-moon ? Heaven knows how that was spent ! 

There's a watering-place, maybe, somev/here in the 
clouds, 
For a bride and a groom whose outfits consist 

Of nothing else under the moon but their shrouds ! 
The current expenses, we know, of this pair 
Could not have been much, since the}' lived upon air ; 
As many young pairs, more romantic than prudent. 
Have lovingly tried to, but found that they could n't ! 

They were liappy ? Of course ! She never had servants, 

He never was known to stay out late at night ; 
She ran up no bills, he ran no fast horses ; 

She had no dressmaker, he never got " tight." 
They lived a most joyous Bohemian life, 
This skeleton grim and his air}- young wife ; 
He thinks that a bride is a " light weight" to carry, 
She thinks a dead girl is a fool not to marry. 

And so, hand in hand, from the dawn unto dawn. 
Knowing well in each other their happiness lies. 

They wander mid nebulse, star-dust, and moons, 
Two jubilant gypsies that camp in the skies. 

Such a bridegroom and bride seem rather absurd, 

But of matches as odd we have all of us heard ; 

And, if we but think of it, man, at the most. 

Is only a skeleton wed to a ghost. 



NEXT YEAR. 



'THHIS afternoon, fis throngli the fields we strolled, 

Our shadows, side b}- side, went on before. 
As though the path, beneath our feet unrolled. 

Two dusky guides went forward to explore. 
Our way was mid the honey haunts of bees. 

Past scented, ha3'-ripe meadow-lands, and where. 
In streams, hy mill-wheels lashed to mimic seas. 

The weeping willow laved her lavish hair. 
Thy lip was laughing, and thine eye was clear — 
" Remember me," thou saidst, " this time next year." 

Birds, gayl}^ winged, like painted shuttles, shot 

Now in, now out, among the summer leaves ; 
Oft with her woofs — stray threads her loom has caught- 

Unconscious Nature mortal destinies weaves. 
The softened sunshine sifted through the trees ; 

Mosaicked light and shadow 'neath us lay : 
The gurgling stream, the voices of the bees, 

To perfect music set the perfect da}- ; 
While I, beside thee, eager bent to hear 
Thee sa}-, " Remember me this time next year." 



216 NEXT YEAR. 

Next year ! What words I spoke — what answer thou ! 

Wh}' should I strive those spectres to recall ? 
Suffice it, down the ways that thou wilt go, 

B}^ thine my shadow nevermore will fall. 
The scented summer-time will come again, 

With bus}- beaks the birds be building here, 
The meadows be as sweet, as ripe the grain, 

The brooks as brown as now, " this time next jear ; " 
While I afar shall feel thy path I bless, 
Since thus that path will know one shadow less. 



EMBRYO. 



T FEEL a poem in my heart to-night, 

A still thing growing ; 
As if the darkness to the outer hght 

A song were owing : 
A something strangely vague, and sweet, and sad, 

Fair, fragile, slender ; 
Not tearful, yet not daring to be glad, 

And oh, so tender ! 

It may not reach the outer world at all, 

Despite its growing ; 
Upon a poem-bud such cold winds fall 

To blight its blowing. 
But, oh, whatever may the thing Detide, 

Free life or fetter. 
My heart, just to have held it till it died. 

Will be the better ! 



10 



THE PRINTING-PRESS. 



/~^ OD said, " Let there be light." Lo ! at his word, 
^-^ Back from the dome profound, the velvet veil 
Of darkness swiftly swept, " and there was light." 

From chaos wrought, the perfect Earth awoke, 
Thrilled to her depths, and her perfection knew ; 
Each welcoming atom its completeness felt, 
And the first sun-flood fell upon the world. 

The primal Morn came with her opulent arms. 

From which, o'erfalling, dropped delightful down 

The fructifj'ing rays, the joy of warmth. 

The sweet surprise of color. Fragrance and Shade, 

Like loving sistei's, in green valleys smiled. 

And from the purple mists the hills arose 

And gazed appalled across each other's shoulders. 

'Neath the concentred splendors of the orb 

That burned above them its miraculous fires, 

Primeval forests quickened into life. 

And their white blood began its circulant course. 



THE PRINTING-PRESS. 219 

Deep in its dungeon lay the tin}' seed ; 

A sunbeam witli transfiguring toucli fell there, 

And lo ! a germ of forests 3-et to be ! 

The lowliest weed that late had lain asleep, 

Worthless and chill on the benumbed soil, 

Became at once a tome, on which was writ 

Tiie law as on the giants of creation. 

Upon their trembling petals roses felt 

The warm kiss of Omnipotence, and breathed 

Eesponsive sweetness. 

Stately palms upheld 
Adoring branches. Perfect lilies raised 
Their silver cups, and drank in new perfection. 
The rocks, the plains, the everlasting seas. 
Stirred to their centres. 

The creature learned the law 
Creation made for him. Beasts roamed the wood ; 
In the first gardens sang the first glad birds ; 
The waters became vital ; fields grew fair ; 
Blossoms assumed new dyes, the sk}' new tints, 
The heights new grandeur. Life was in the world. 

From out ab3-smal space Night stole, and threw 
Her strange and sombre shadow over all ; 
And from the hollow of her dusky hand 
Flung darkness back upon the sea and shore. 

" Let there be light," God said, " and there was light." 



220 THE PRINTING-PRESS. 

From luminous fountains of tlie sk}- it poured 
In tempered torrents of effulgence down. 
From wide horizon to horizon rolled 
Stupendous constellations. Orion's belt 
Gleamed where the mighty hunter stood on high, 
And held his trophies in the glare of suns 
Fresh from Creation's hand. 

The white stars burst 
Into eternal blossom. Unknown spheres 
At mystic altars of the Infinite 
Kindled their never quenching fires, and swung 
To their supernal orbits. 

The asteroids 
Clung like a flock of frightened birds unto 
The azure empyrean. Helmeted Mars 
Stood with his lurid visor up, and dared 
Defiant worlds. 

Planets took up their march 
In swift obedience to the silent laws, 
And went their way flinging through boundless space, 
From never empty lamps, perpetual light. 

Suns and their satellites their radiance blent 
With grand celestial mysteries, 3'et kept 
A secret from the earth. 

The Southern Cross 
Hui'led its red jewels on the astral deep. 
And left them there to glow forevermore. 
From stellar silences young Lyra looked, 



THE PRINTING-PRESS. 221 

And the sidereal Scorpion grandly stretched 
Across the shining skies his luminous length. 

Filled with a sudden glory, lesser orbs 

Flashed down the dizzying heights their lambent rays, 

Trembling to find themselves so glorious. 

Slender with youth, the primogenial moon 
Her golden hammock in the zenith hung, 
And, swaying in the far refulgent fields, 
Shot scintillant arrows over land and sea. 

In clustered splendor on the sapphire heights, 
Complete in lustrous numbers, smiled afar 
The Pleiadean sisters. 

Over all. 
Resplendent, hung the unmeasured Milk}' Waj', — 
A bridge of worlds, arched over countless worlds ; 
And drowned lay darkness in the drenching light. 

Earth was ; Light was ; Man was : and all the world 
Thrilled to the harmonies of Genesis. 

The moon and stars and sun shone on. Light was : 
Through change and counterchange it lived unclianged ; 
Still was there heard a voice crying aloud, 
" Let there be light ! — 3'ea, yea ! let there be light ! " 
It was a voice that issued from men's souls, 



222 THE PlllNTlNG-PRESS. 

From hearts that burned with deep, ambitious fires, 
With yearnings vague, and indeterminate wants. 

The nations of the earth took up the cry : 

Men wrought, and delved, and builded monuments. 

They made the stars their books, and from tliem drew 

Portent and inspiration. Invention rose 

And flourished in the land. Science was great ; 

And Architecture, with luxurious hand. 

Inwrought her temples with rare ivories. 

And sate her palaces on precious stones. 

Cities sprang up on man}- a verdant site : 
Palm3U'a's pillars gemmed the Assyrian i)lain ; 
The ships ofTarshish bore the dves of Tyre, 
Odorous freight of precious cedar wood. 
And spices from the famed Phaniician coast. 
Toward the palaces of Solomon. 

Damascus shone beneath the Syrian sun ; 
And, great within her hundred brazen gates, 
Where mid the hanging gardens proudly rose 
The haught}' grandeur of Semiramis, 
Sat towered Babylon. 

Persepolis 
Became the pride and " glor}- of the East," 
And bj' the Murdusht meadows builded up 
Her temples, tombs, and marble monuments. 
Kingdoms and kings ruled and were OA-erruled : 
Eg3'pt, and proud Assyria, and Chaldea, 



THE PIUNTING-PRESS. 223 

The classic three, rose to then- height in power, 
Tlien toppled to the deep and- echoing tomb 
Of mighty things that were. 

The bearded scribe 
Sculptured the stone, or traced with patient hand 
The labored page of the papyrus leaf 
Graved with the stylus, or, in precious inks 
Of fluent metals, dipped the Nilotic reed. 

Meanwhile from crumbling places tottered down 
The bricks of Babylon, with the cuneiform 
Inscriptions of dead heroes and great kings. 

From peak to peak of the vast centuries 

Time slowly stepped. Creed after creed was born, 

And swept in turn from off the face of earth. 

From him who was King Suddhodana's son, 

To him in gardens of Gethsemane, 

Men turned, and hungered, and were fed, and drank 

The subtle essence of Divinity, — 

Were strong, were sad, were humble, were rejoiced. 

Grew great with earth's best greatness in their lives, 

And passed to death with fortitude sublime. 

Yet from their burial-places came the Voice, 

Calling from what was not, " Let there be light ! " 

As in the earliest moments of the morn 

A tender radiance gives sweet hints that Dawn 

Is smiling at the Orient's shining gates, 

So came a strange yet penetrating gleam 



224 THE PRINTING-PRESS. 

Across the mental shadows of the time, 
And, flickering in the Orient of men's liopes, 
Stole toward an ancient cit}' on the Rhine, 
And entered at the stonj- gates of Mainz. 

It wandered past the famous Eichelstein, 

Past Roman ruins where the imperial hand 

Of Charlemagne its lasting impress left ; 

Traversed the crooked streets and narrow ways ; 

Went out among the roofs, the lofty towers, 

The homes and altars of tlie quaint old town. 

It hovered o'er the pillow of the priest ; 

It glittered past the scholar and the sage ; 

It turned from luxury's couch and pride's demands, 

And entered where, within his lowly room, 

An eager artisan bent above his work 

With bus}" fingers and fast-beating heart. 

Here stayed the ra^', and dropped its light divine 

Upon the earnest brow of Gutenberg. 

Beneath its radiance Genius recognized 

Her child, and with a kindling kiss woke all 

The latent fires within his eager soul. 

'jNeath that inspiring touch his hand became 

The chosen instrument to set the torch 

Of quenchless progress on Time's might}' gates. 

As from the seed the generous verdure grows 
To glad the earth, — as from the acorn spring 



THE PRINTING-PRESS. 225 

The lordl}' forests holding in their depths 
The ships of commerce and the wheels of war, 
The food to fill the ravenous months of steam, 
Traffic's broad roads, and cities yet unbuilt, — 
So that white ray that fell on Rhenish Mainz, 
And rested there four hundred 3'ears ago, 
Was the small spark from which has grown apace 
A lustre, searching and far reaching, shed 
Upon remotest corners of the globe. 
Then it illumed a set of wooden blocks ; 
Now, from ten million million fonts of type, 
It glitters in the firmament of Time. 

'T is light, which grows as grows the banyan-tree ; 
Each slender branch becomes in turn a root. 
Each root again sends up its flexile branch. 
Till one perpetual range of vigorous growth, 
Whose limits mortal man may not assign, 
Marks its unending march around the world. 

As some far sun astronomers have found, 
Whose burnished ra^'s, like plummets, were cast down, 
In the beginning, through the seas of space, — 
Ra\'s which must fall through ages j'et to come, 
Sounding eternities on their wa}' to meet 
The gaze of races still unborn, — even so 
Must spread the vivid, permeating beams 
Of that great light John Gutenberg discerned 
In thought's broad universe, the Printing-Press. 
10* o 



226 THE PRINTING-PRESS. 

The king it is that stands behind all thrones, 
With power boundless as the realms of space ; 
In one firm hand the lamp of knowledge burns, 
The other, reason's flambeau holds aloft, 
And the twin flames illuminate the world. 

There is no good it cannot multiply' ; 

No wrong its brow august cannot frown down. 

Religion, politics, morals, and the law 

Are fagots in its fingers to light men 

With kindling beacons to exalted heights, 

Or point the lurid depths of evil out. 

Progress and Education stand upon 

Its right hand and its left, and round them falls 

This light that makes them known to all mankind : 

It beckons bygone ages near, until 

They stand so close who reads the present needs 

But turn the page, and lo ! the past is there. 

It folds the parted corners of the earth 

Together as a scroll, and at men's hearths 

The arctic snows and tropic blossoms meet, 

And Occident and Orient clasp hands. 

It throws its light on Famine's bleeding lips, 
And toward her Plenty's generous footstep guides ; 
Lorn Ignoi'ance, grovelling in her sloth and want, 
It gently leads to Wisdom's noble hand. 

Like the fair tent of which the fable tells, 
Whose magic folds could hide a mustard-seed, 



THE PRINTING-PRESS. 227 

Or so expand as to conceal the earth, — 

So does the Press, from simple ABC — 

The mustard-seed of knowledge, taught beside 

The first, best schoolroom, the fond mother's knee — 

Expand its folds until it covers all 

Of learning, science, literature, and art. 

With a magician's power, its magic light 

Men's names upon immortal canvas writes, 

And lifts them to the gaze of all the world. 

Long since Fame came, and in its gleams laid down 

Her brazen trump. There humbled Jove beheld 

Such thunderbolts as he had never dared 

To hurl from heights of old Olympus down. 

From the deep waters of oblivion 

It rescues drowning Genius. Through its might 

We seem to hear again on Grecian hills 

The eloquent accents of Demosthenes. 

The Forum's echoes once again awake 

With Caesar's voice and Cicero's ringing tones ; 

While Miriam's C3-mbals and sweet David's psalms 

Reverberate adown the centuries. 

Itself an orator whose tongue the gods 

Have touched with living fire, its luminous words, 

Day after da^^ with never tiring zeal. 

Flash over hemisphei'e and hemisphere. 

'T is the inspired preacher who goes forth 

To " preach the gospel unto all the world," — 

The golden gospel of enlightenment. 



228 THE PRINTING-PRESS. 

Men look back from a workl of printed books, 
Upon a world with but one printed book. 
Progress triumphant waves o'er Then and Now 
Her radiant banner ; and the darkness grows 
Alight, as night grows luminous with stars ; 
While what men name as light quivers upon 
The verge of greater light to come, until 
The soul, unveiled, the splendor of the raj's 
Scarce dares to face. 

The scribe has laid away 
His ancient reed and his papj-rus leaf 
As relics, whereunto research will turn, 
And reverential learning burn its lamp, 
In dusty chambers of antiquit}-. 
The bricks of Babylon to the scholar's hand 
Yield slowly up their m3'stic lettered lore ; 
And while one to the patient seeker gives 
The half-light of its shadowed histor}', 
From continent to continent the Press 
Has flashed its rays and met them around the globe ! 

I looked across a monumented land. 

On ever}' side I saw defiant stone 

And many-metaled bronze, with sculptured names 

Of heroed greatness in their guardianship. 

I said, "Where, in commemorative claj', 

In glittering marble or in shining brass, 

On this broad land is reared the towering shaft 

Whose carving chisels have immortal grown 

By contact with the name of Gutenberg ? 



THE PRINTING-PRESS. 229 

Its crest," I said, " must be among the skies ; 
Its base must lie upon the world's wide centre, 
And all the nations must thereto have brought, 
In grateful tribute, gold and precious stones. 
To build it up with radiance to outshine 
The famed Ephesian dome, or palaces 
Which had for their foundations priceless gems." 

Last night an answer came to me in dreams ; 
It said, '' Such monument hath Gutenberg 
As never rose to mortal man before ; 
Each corner of its dazzhng base is laid 
On each of the four corners of the earth. 
Its summit rises where the finite eye 
Of man is blinded by Infinity. 
There hath the veiled Past her treasures poured ; 
Thereon the Future sheds her brightest smile ; 
Tradition has bestowed her gathered lore, 
And meek Religion brought her shining cross ; 
The poet there has placed his wreath of bays ; 
The sage, the jewels of his wisdom borne ; 
Commerce, rare trophies from the land and sea ; 
Science and Learning, all their treasured store ; 
Music, her most ; the Beautiful, its best. 

" There all the sacred Nine have tribute poured ; 
And Intellect, Culture, and Refinement stand. 
With hearts inlocked, beside the ascending shaft ; 
While Genius bows a reverential front, 
As Progress there his sealed orders brings. 



230 THE PRINTING-PRESS. 

The ro3'al hands of married Steel and Steam 
Bear day by day new treasures to the spot 
"Where, grander than earth's grandest monuments, 
Rises this dome of domes, the Printing-Press. 
And as of old the Parsee's quenchless flame 
Eiurned b}' the altar and the sacred hearth, 
So burn the fervid fires of Eloquence 
Beside this vast and universal shrine 
At which the nations of the world bow down, 
And where, on high. Art's loving hand hath traced 
The immortal name, — Johannes Gutenberg." 



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